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European Union (Accessions) Bill

I fully accept that. I have always found that the hon. Gentleman’s activities on the European Scrutiny Committee are in a positive vein, unlike those of some of his colleagues who travelled with us and encouraged people in other countries not to join the EU. Their admonition fell on deaf ears everywhere that we went, but he has never been guilty of saying such things. We should accept that there are problems and I shall mention some of them. We should ask why Romania is joining in 2007, rather than 2008, which could have been an option. One of the problems is that Romania will have to run very hard to catch up with our demands on tackling institutionalised fraud, whether small-scale bribery or large-scale fraud. When we met the President of Romania, he admitted that fraud was a major problem that he was going to tackle. The hon. Member for Totnes omitted to mention the fact that there was a rather garish picture of a former Minister in manacles on the front page of the national newspaper, which said—I believe that this was the translation—that he was shouting, ““The President of Romania has put me here, and I will ensure that he ends up in the same prison.”” The current President is clearly taking on board the need to tackle large-scale corruption and fraud in the institutions that previously ran the country. If his record as mayor of Bucharest is anything to go by, he will challenge and beat down that high level of corruption. It would be unreal of us to think that this is just about the relationship between Romania and the EU. Senior members of its Parliament made candid comments about the reason why Romania would join in 2007. They said that they would offer the USA a base there. When I asked, ““Do you mean a NATO base?”” they said, ““No, a USA base in Romania.”” If that is part of the equation, I am concerned. If Romania is to become involved in international defence, that should happen through NATO and it should be done in a way that does not single out any country as a partner in defence matters, while it is applying to become our partner in economic matters. Although I welcome the accession clause, I hope that the Minister will clarify whether a base in Romania will be offered to an individual country outwith the EU, rather than NATO, which is our common alliance. It might be that the politicians were expressing only an aspiration, but if that became a reality, it would viewed negatively. It would be seen that there was a false contract between the EU and Romania if the purpose of speeding up accession was to hasten the provision of any form of military base for the United States of America.