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European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, we are considering whether to go forward to complete the parliamentary process on this Bill today. Why should we delay? We need to know not only where this country stands but where other countries stand when in due course we consider what to do next. This is an important procedure and there is no purpose in delaying it. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Owen, for whom I have great respect. He made the important point, with which I agree, that we need to take a decision based on what we can do to help the Irish. Surely the best people to judge how to help the Irish are the Irish. They have made it perfectly clear to us and other European nations that they wish this ratification process to proceed. That should weigh heavily in our judgments. Finally, I have heard tonight, and it has been echoed in the words of William Hague in the other place, that somehow we do not need this and that the European Union works perfectly happily as it is. I have been at the other end of a European foreign policy lever as European special representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was often told that Bosnia was dysfunctional, but I can tell your Lordships that it was far less dysfunctional than Brussels has been. Europe now operates with two heads in places such as Bosnia. We have put into Bosnia and Kosovo more money than the United States, but because we cannot speak with a single voice as between the Council and the Commission, if a Bosnian or a Kosovar wants to get something done, they knock on the door of the United States, which speaks with a single voice, responds quickly and provides the resources needed in the time available. We cannot do that in Europe. We are wasting our resources and influence even in areas that matter to us gravely. Those who say that we should continue as we have done and that it is all working perfectly okay are saying that we should continue to have a split and divided voice on the key issue of Kosovo, which is so essential to our future, and that we should continue to be content with the idea that we provide differential inputs as Europe within NATO in Afghanistan. I do not think—here I agree so much with the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater—that we have understood the new world in which Europe is now moving. It will be a much chillier world. Let me give your Lordships some facts. In the early 1990s, Europe had about 35 to 36 per cent of the total global wealth; today, the figure is 20 per cent. At the same time, in the early 1990s, the Far East had 17 per cent of total global wealth; today, the figure is over 30 per cent. We are seeing a massive shift of power and the development of a multipolar world in which it will be no longer good enough for us to have a foreign policy that says that we shall simply hang on to the apron strings of our friendly neighbourhood superpower. We will have to work with much more subtlety and intelligence to get what is best for this country and our citizens in such a world. We are seeing a retrenching United States, a rising Russia, a rising China and the development of global problems. If anyone in this House believes that we can best serve the interests of our citizens by condemning ourselves to being a series of corks bobbing along in the wake of other people’s ocean liners, they are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. If Europe does not deepen its integration on matters of defence and foreign affairs, we will waste money, influence and time and the decade that we see ahead of us will be much more turbulent, dangerous and difficult. I do not know what we do next. I am in a quandary. This is a tragic moment and it was a tragic decision, but we must treat it with respect—of course we must. When we come to consider what should happen in the new world that is now developing, knowing where our colleagues in Europe stand on the Lisbon treaty will be the best mechanism by which we can decide what to do next. That process starts in this House and it starts tonight. We should not delay; we must make sure that the voice of this House on this treaty is heard not in five or six months’ time but tonight. That is the best way to move forward into what is a difficult and potentially very tricky situation.