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EU: Enlargement (EUC Report)

My Lords, like all other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, and his team on another most authoritative and informative report. Although there has been a time lag before your Lordships’ House has been able to discuss it, the timing has turned out to be extremely apposite. This a good moment to look at the issues raised. I must confess that I am concerned about all such reports that tackle the issue of the future shape of Europe and what kind of Europe we want. I shall put my concerns in the following way: of course there is a case for an integrated European bloc—if not a superstate, which we are told is not on the cards, then at least a tight-knit grouping which is mainly western European and may be extended to the geographical areas of historic Europe, but with substantial features of political union. It would be a harmonising, gathering and integrated body. That is what Jean Monnet and many others wanted and what many leading Europeans still want today. They want an efficient, strong-centred, integrated entity that is capable of turning out fast decisions and of reaching a unified world view. We have heard that case put by some noble Lords in this debate. With that goes the idea with which not all people wish to be associated of a much better protected Europe, maybe even a fortress Europe, which in this age of global challenges has somehow to defend itself. That vision finds a clear echo in the pronouncements of Monsieur Sarkozy, who is to be the new French president. He has spoken explicitly about the need for more protection of Europe against outside forces. That is one view. By contrast, there is a different case for a wider and more open association that stretches far outside western Europe and far beyond the Europe of geographical definition, including not only the east and west Balkans, which are in our idea of Europe, but Turkey and, in due course, Ukraine, Belarus and even Armenia and Azerbaijan. All those countries have aspirations to join the EU, which would then reach deep into central Asia and be more Eurasian than European. Such an arrangement could certainly share the so-called brand value of the Union, as one witness to the committee described it. However, it would not be economically uniform in any way; indeed, it would be deeply divided, with vast contrasts in incomes and cultures. Realistically, it could never be the tight-knit body that the old federalist Europeans dreamt of. It would be bound to be more confederal than federal, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said. Whatever has happened regarding past enlargements, that prospect for the years ahead means that you can have one Europe or the other, but not in the end—or even from now on—both. Nor can the fundamental differences between those visions be papered over for much longer by calling it variable geometry. There comes a point when the variable geometry stretches so much that there is no geometric pattern left. The position to which we and Europe are now moving is a matter of careful choice. My noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry commented on that in a typically profound speech and I am not sure that we can continue to fudge the issue. My concern is that this excellent report only touches on that central, old dilemma between deepening and widening, but it does so in a new context. That is mentioned specifically in paragraph 157, which is probably the most significant section of the whole report. However, the report sails on past, without recognising that now is the time for that issue to be addressed and for strategic choices to be made on the kind of Europe that we want. The report simply states that there should be no boundaries to Europe or to the EU. That is okay and, in a way, it is realistic so long as one does not then argue in the same breath that the EU should, at the same time, become more integrated and more centralised with tighter rules, more efficient decision machinery and more political integration, as, I am afraid, the report is slightly inclined to do in the paragraphs that follow the crucial paragraph 157. We have reached the stage where it cannot; nor, anyway, is it so obvious that more efficient decision-making procedures are necessary or beneficial. In practice—here, the report is on very good ground and makes an interesting section—the already enormous enlargement and widening, up to 27 members from the old 15, nine or six before that, has all gone rather smoothly with no real sign of slowing the Brussels speed or capacity for reaching new decisions and making new laws. On the contrary, as the Economist recently pointed out, more regulations and directives than ever are now flowing from the Commission and there is no slow-down there, as the committee rightly confirms in its report from the evidence it heard and as my noble friend Lord Stevens of Ludgate reminded us. That is the choice that those who are serious about dealing with these issues now have to face. The report helps us to go that way but it does not quite face up to those issues. I now come to the subject of Turkey, on which some fascinating comments have been made. In one sense, it is indeed a real and immediate problem. Turkey is huge, as noble Lords have said; it has the second biggest army in NATO; it has moments of deep turbulence, as now; and there appears to be a growing anti-European Union sentiment, which mirrors the strong antagonism from within the EU to Turkish membership that is growing more evident, especially in France. There is also the intractable Cyprus issue. I do not intend to go into that in detail now, partly for reasons of time but also because some thorough and illuminating comments have been made on it in the debate. However, as one commentator put it—I am not sure whether it was in evidence to the committee or whether it was in the Economist, but it was an unfair and insulting comment—Turkey is, "““too large, too poor and too Muslim””." That is the sort of view that informs the very anti-Turkish feelings to be found in parts of continental Europe. With wonderful irony, it seems that the present—and successful—non-secular, Islamic-inclined Government are more pro eventual accession to the EU and the so-called secular movements, which in some ways seem to be allied with the military organisations, are most opposed. As Turkey is a central player in the Middle East jigsaw and is inextricably involved in the Kurdish problem, which means being involved in the Iraqi and Iranian problems, there is no doubt that, if these things were to happen now, the EU would be brought into the centre of these tortuous issues even more than it is already, as the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, reminded us. In one sense, the situation is immediate, extremely worrying and complex but, in another, it is not such a problem for the simple reason that it is all years away—at least a decade. As the noble Lord, Lord Roper, asked, in 10 years’ time, what kind of EU will we have? I predict that it will be quite different. I believe that a much looser, wider version of Europe, with less centralism and fewer ambitions to be a bloc, a superpower, a counterweight to the United States or whatever the phrase is, will by then have prevailed, and the integrators will have been finally defeated. I am not quite with my noble friend Lord Stevens in saying that the EU will have ceased to exist but it will certainly have changed and adapted. It will have to have done so in a very big way. This will prove to be a correct response to world events because, as, for example, Monsieur Vedrine, the former French Foreign Minister, pointed out the other day, Europe will by then no longer be setting the global agenda at all. The pacemaker’s baton will have passed to Asia. We need a good, friendly and co-operative European neighbourhood, and we must never tire of working for that. But it is the rising powers of Asia and elsewhere that will really count. That is where the wealth and the political power already increasingly lie. The world is no longer Euro-centric; it is not even Atlantic-centric. Globalisation and microchip power have changed everything, as they were bound to do. To survive and prosper, we in western Europe must each work with agility to build up our strengths, links and networks with the ““developing world””—it is rather patronisingly so called, but is now rapidly becoming the fastest advancing high-technology world—and we must work to the utmost to provide good links and commerce with those nations. I sum up my feelings on this subject by saying that a wider, enlarged, flexible and open Europe will be a great help and benefit to our neighbourhood, as—in many, although not all, ways—the European market, the European Community and the European Union have been of benefit so far. But it will never make the European Union a world power or a cohesive superbloc, and nor should wise politicians try to push and divert it that way. There is no bullet to bite, as one Euro-phile official misguidedly urged on Britain the other day. Therefore, in 10 years’ time, it may be far easier for Turkey to join the European Union, as it will have changed. The choice for the type of Europe that we want will then, by default and by the power of global trends, have already been made. It will indeed turn out that there is no alternative, as one of your Lordships said, to progressive enlargement. Perhaps unintentionally, that seems to be the central and realistic message of this report, and that is why, like others, I strongly welcome it.