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European Affairs

It is a real honour and privilege to have listened to the debate for the past couple of hours. It is a strange pleasure to follow on from the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who is such a famous Eurosceptic. It was a great pleasure to hear him speak, and surprising to hear him being as supportive of Europe as he was. It is a pleasure to take part in the debate because European issues, especially the European economic union, are of such massive importance, especially today. I want to consider Europe from a much wider perspective and examine the founding principles of the European project as a whole. Sometimes we are in danger of losing sight of why Europe is so important, and I would like to speak about why Europe is so important to me from a personal perspective. I have a British mother and a German father and I moved to England when I was nine years old. I was born and brought up in Berlin—West Berlin, as it was known then—which at the time was an occupied and divided city. It was at the forefront of the cold war, and that small area represented Europe's history—both the war itself, and the post-war ideological divisions. Berlin was absolutely at the centre of that. I remember travelling from West Berlin to West Germany by air when we could choose from only three different allied airlines or—far worse—queue for hours and hours at one of the few checkpoints so that we could go by car to West Germany, travelling on the bumpiest roads that anybody has ever been on. Because Berlin was an occupied territory, Berliners did not have West German passports; we just had Berlin identity cards. Whilst we were much freer than our East German neighbours, it did not feel like freedom. It was a small city, and we were surrounded on all sides by walls and watchtowers. We could not go very far without bumping into a brick wall—literally—or into massive fencing that had been erected, alongside huge watchtowers with Russians inside. Although it was quite exciting when we were younger, it did not feel free. I found when visiting relatives in West Germany or England that things were completely different. We could see what freedom was, and it was not what we had in Berlin. For all those reasons, and as long as I can remember, I have been a European first and foremost. I listen in horror and despair when I hear people moaning about how much money we give to Europe. They complain about the highly skilled labour we have got from the eastern European accession states—people who are helping our local and national economies. And they complain even more now that they think everybody is going back home again. People lap up stories about straight bananas and ready salted crisps. However hilarious these stories are, most of them are completely mad and totally wrong, such as the story about renaming Waterloo station so that we do not offend the French. I read a fantastic one about circus acrobats having to wear hard hats because of some EU health and safety directive. That was reported as gospel truth, and it was absolute rubbish. Those stories are hilarious, and even though I am half-German, I find them funny, but there is a serious point to be made about why Europe is so important. Sometimes it is hard to remember that in recent history, people in Germany, Spain, Portugal and Greece lived under dictatorships. These were actual police states and dictatorships, and they are still in living memory for some people. Now that we have a European Union, we forget that. People talk about the UK within Europe and say that it is like a dictatorship, and that we live in a police state. When I hear people come out with those lines, I want to scream and say, ““You've clearly never lived in a dictatorship, you've never seen what a dictatorship is like. This is not a dictatorship.”” Of the 27 EU member states, 10 are former communist countries. There were no freedoms in those countries, and I saw that directly as a child when I went to visit people in East Germany. People could not say what they thought, they had no freedom to travel and their travel was often restricted within their own borders. People often could not travel around the country in which they lived. They could not buy what they wanted, quite apart from what they needed, because things were not in the shops. People were desperate for things that we took for granted such as soap, sink plugs and oranges. People could not listen to the music that they wanted to, and they could not read books that they wanted to. Although those freedoms that were denied to people were small, taken together they were significant and important. Ask people from the countries that were former communist states what membership of the European Union means to them and what freedom means to them, and they will tell you. It is because of Europe that the countries that were communist states are thriving parliamentary democracies. Because we are members of a European Union, we are no longer on the verge of annihilating warfare with those states. I remember clearly that those states were the enemy when I was growing up, and they are no longer. They are not just not the enemy; they are states that we welcome. We accept their culture and we are starting to learn their languages. That has got to be a better way of doing things than what we had before. That is why the European Union matters so much. It is also why Eurosceptics are wrong-headed—they lack sympathy or an understanding of what it must have been like to live in those countries. It is important to remember that the European Economic Community was founded on the principles of communities of democracy. The EEC founders wanted to find a way of ensuring that the whole of continental Europe would never again be ravaged by the death and destruction that it experienced in the second world war. In that community of democracies, we are far less likely to declare war on a country that we want to trade with. Through trade and cultural links, this community, the European Union, brings together a collection of distinct and diverse democracies. All the democracies are completely different. They are all imperfect, but by bringing them together we understand that we can support each other and make our democracies even stronger. That is partly why the Tories have such a problem with Europe. It works because member states believe that common endeavour strengthens everyone. I know that the UK, along with many of the other richer EU nations, has been a net financial contributor to the EU, but we should not be apologetic about that. That money has been spent to help much poorer countries in the EU—as Ireland, Portugal and Spain once were. They have become economic success stories in comparison with what they were previously. As such, formerly poor countries are in a position to buy our goods, visit our country and spend their euros. For good socialist reasons, I support that. By making Europe economically successful for every nation, we improve our own economic standing. We strengthen Europe and thereby strengthen our standing in it. I sometimes wish that the founders of the European Economic Community were around now to see what we have achieved. They simply would not believe what we have done to the EU—I hope that the hon. Member for Stone will not intervene.