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Europe in the World (EUC Report)

My Lords, as a non-member of your Lordships’ European Union subcommittee, which prepared this excellent report under the chairmanship of my noble friend, I hope that I may be permitted a slightly different approach. By way of background I should mention that I served as a member of the European Parliament after the first direct elections in 1979. I represent your Lordships’ House as a member of the parliamentary delegation to the assembly of the Council of Europe and to the assembly of the Western European Union and have done so for several years. If the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, thinks that the role of the European Parliament is neglected, he needs reminding of the role of the assemblies of the Council of Europe and of the WEU. I returned only yesterday from Berlin, where the parliamentary assembly of the WEU was meeting to consider its future and in particular its role as an assembly of national parliamentarians representing a wider Europe than the European Union and what that role should be in monitoring, for example, the European security and defence policy. I remind your Lordships that the WEU was originally set up by the Treaty of Dunkirk some years before the Treaty of Rome was signed up to. The role of the WEU was discussed in relation to various missions—the force recently sent to the Congo, the situation in Kosovo and the Balkans, the involvement in Operation Althea and other missions that have been referred to. It is a matter of concern that there is an overlap and lack of clarity between the roles of the WEU and the European Union. Given that the report encourages greater visibility and increased co-operation, I hope that in future similar circumstances, the role of the WEU will not be forgotten. By the same token, perhaps I may now turn to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which—although I realise that trade was not part of the committee’s remit—has an extremely important role in monitoring various global organisations. For example, there are annual reports on, naturally enough, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and on the WTO and the OECD.The presidents or secretaries-general of those organisations normally come to our meetings to hear the reports, to participate in the discussions and to be accountable for their organisations. As long as the United Nations lacks a democratically electedforum, the role of a regional assembly representing46 countries—as the Council of Europe now does—is vital, as is the role of the European Parliament, which represents albeit only 27 countries. In that context, various subjects spring to mind which require accountability, visibility and more co-operation at a wider level. The Oral Question that I asked this morning, to which the noble Lord,Lord Triesman, responded, is relevant. It concerned Columbia, the fight against drugs and the need for concerted action—not only in carrying out programmes that require the co-operation of every country in the world, but in monitoring the effect of those programmes and learning from that experience, as the report mentions. The environment is another issue to which the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, referred, where one country alone cannot solve the problems. All those issues require better co-ordination and strategic planning. I am at one with the conclusions of the report on that, but my plea is that we must have horses for courses. Where organisations already have a specific remit, it is not necessary for the European Union to duplicate it. An example of that is the current process of setting up a costly fundamental rights agency within the European Union, given that the European Court of Human Rights and the Commission on Human Rights in Strasbourg are experiencing major budgetary difficulties. It is strange that all the member countries of the European Union, which are also members of the Council of Europe, do not see that as an unnecessary duplication. The report states in Chapter 6 that relations with national parliaments and the European Parliament should be fostered, but I hope that members of the committee will also encourage more communication and complementarity between the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the WEU. Finally, whatever people may think of our membership of the European Union—and there are widely diverging views on that—the rest of the world undoubtedly sees us as part of Europe, whether one is talking about the Europe of the European Union or the wider Europe. I would like to think that it is both. I am all for recognising and highlighting Europe’s role in the world and I very much welcome this report and this debate.