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European Union (Amendment) Bill

The right hon. Gentleman is well versed in these issues, but despite his point he does not yet have the same status as a Head of Government. Throughout the operation of the European Council, whenever it has made decisions by consensus they have involved the agreement of everybody. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, as a keen student of EU history, that began with General de Gaulle's empty chair policy and the famous Luxembourg compromise. That compromise, on the French part, determined the ability of one of the member states to ram on the brakes when it thought that a matter was of vital national interest and to say, ““No, we will not allow that to go through.”” The fact that the provision has now been incorporated in the treaty goes directly back to the set of events that involved General de Gaulle and the empty chair policy. Given the history, I find it completely inconceivable—although it is totally in line with Conservative Members' usual attempts to build up paranoid ideas of what might happen—that the circumstances would develop in such a way. We will oppose the amendments.