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Europe in the World (EUC Report)

My Lords, I very much welcome the report, as I do the introductory remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, which I thought were excellent. I regret that I am not a member of the sub-committee but, when I saw that the debate had been tabled, it seemed to me that, rather than reducing the time available for speeches from a quarter of an hour, on such a broad subject the temptation would be to speak for much longer. Clearly Europe has shaped the world. Whether it is the Portuguese and Spanish in South America, the Russians in Siberia, or the French, the Dutch and the British in south-east Asia, the world as we see it atthe moment is very much a European invention. The report was in some ways a disappointment to me, but it needs to be seen in the context of this communication from the Commission. It is verymuch a plan B in that plan A was the European constitution, which gave a much greater role to the European institutions in foreign and defence policy. I think that that is how we have to view the matter. Indeed, the communication starts by headlining the important areas of Europe but then moves down into what I would call a technical and management agenda. It is important to remember some of the issues surrounding Europe and some of the areas where Europe stands at the forefront in the world community, a number of which have been mentioned already. For example, with its 27 member states it has a population of half a billion and is smaller only than India and China; it has the largest world economy—something like $13 trillion per annum, which is larger than the United States and on a par with NAFTA; and it accounts for about one-fifth of world trade and is the world’s largest trading partner. In addition, as my noble friend Lord Dykes pointed out, not only are most bond reserves held in euros but the euro is now responsible for some 25 per cent of international reserve currency. That compares with the pound sterling at 4 per cent and the yen at something like 3 per cent. So Europe is a very big player in the world, and itis sometimes forgotten that it is a unique political organisation: it is both a community of member states and a community of citizens. That has not previously been seen in the world, and it is unique and successful in terms of international co-operation. However, it is seen very much as being big on global trade but as a minnow in otherwise projecting its power. I suppose that that comes back to the famous Kissinger comment from the 1970s Nixon era, ““When I want to speak to Europe, who do I call?””. We now have a telephone number that the Secretary of State in the United States can call—that of Javier Solana. As we know from the European constitution, we wanted a much greater role than is available at the moment but, even on soft power issues, Europe can be very proud about the number of things that it has done. As well as being the largest trading partner, Europe has also been active in areas such as the development trade rounds. As we know, Doha has stalled and we hope that it will be successful, but I believe that, as a unity, Europe has managed to keep those talks alive and still wishes them to succeed. European trade used its leverage and power to get Russia to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol, and that signature brought the protocol into force globally. Europe was able to give its assent to Russian membership of the WTO in exchange for that, and that was an example of it successfully using its leverage on trade to make the globe better. On climate change, the EU made the Kyoto protocol possible. We now have the largest emissions trading system, which has its difficulties but will be a model for future global trading of carbon, a major way in which carbon emissions will start to be cut world-wide. On its European neighbourhood policy, the EU is using its trade connections with other aspiring neighbourhood nations in the European, north African and near-eastern spheres. It has been reasonably successful in all those areas. Its largest success, however, is enlargement. One of my great loves is history. Look back to the 20th century, with the cost in lives and misery of crumbling empires; one-fifth of the population, 5 million people, disappeared through the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, of which 1.5 million were Armenians with 700,000 causalities in the First World War. The breakdown of that empire caused misery and genocide. The dissolution of our own empire inIndia and Pakistan saw causalities of 500,000 and12 million refugees. We have seen the same with the French empire in south-east Asia, with Vietnamand the self-genocide that latterly took place in Cambodia. The former Soviet empire, with the10 member states that moved into Europe and complied with the Copenhagen principles, has been a fantastic success for transition between non-democratic command economies and the security of the democratic, successful and growing market economies we have today. In the early days, Europe clearly failed in the former Yugoslavia, and particularly Bosnia. Even there, we have now managed to put our efforts into Bosnia and Macedonia much more effectively. We have perhaps made that situation more successful, but we still have some way to go with battle groups and rapid reaction forces. Where will it be important for Europe to go in the future? A number of areas have already been mentioned, and I will not go through them at any great length. Certainly, development is one. However large and effective we make European organisations such as FRONTEX, we will certainly not be able to contain the refugee problem in north Africa, and further east in Europe, unless we can allow and promote the development of those economies. On climate change, we will be unable to build our sea walls sufficiently unless we can further lead the world on emission reductions. Europe must also build up its military capability. Although France, Britain, Greece and Cyprus spend respectable proportions of their GDP on defence, that is certainly not the case for other member states. It is important that, while remaining close to the United States in NATO, Europe must build up its own independent capability for military action around the St Petersburg tasks. That is a priority for helping world order and projecting that greater power. Europe is no longer the shaper of the world that it was. The United States has been that for many decades; although it is perhaps losing the confidence of the world, as my noble friend Lord Dykes mentioned earlier. It is increasingly looking towards Asia rather than Europe for the future. The world deserves better than that. It deserves at least two major democratic blocks in geopolitics. The United States will, I hope, be joined by India as a future world power, but we must also be there. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, pointed out that Europe can never be taken seriously when three delegates visit other nations for negotiations. Neither the management techniques in this communication nor the stronger global goals of the European Union will be fulfilled if Europe does not speak with one voice at member state level, particularly the EU three—Germany, France and the United Kingdom. We may have been successful; we shall have to see. It is not looking that good at the moment in the visits of foreign ministers to Tehran. For EU foreign policy to be a real success, we have to be united in visits to Washington, Baghdad and Beirut as well.