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European Council

My Lords, I certainly agree with what the noble Lord said at the end about Montenegro, which we hope, over time, will be able to play a full part in the European Union. I liked the noble Lord’s characterisation, at the start of his words, about treaty modifications. Of course, what he did not go on to say, when speaking about parliamentary sovereignty, or the primacy of Parliament, is that if there is a substantial transfer of power, we will take it to a referendum of the people of this country. We may disagree about that, but I think that it is a perfectly logical position for us to have. The substance of the noble Lord’s point was about zero real growth for 10 years. We have proposed that we should reduce growth up until 2014 and that between 2014 and 2020 there should be no growth, or zero real growth, as the noble Lord pointed out. We cling strongly to this view in part because of the difficulties faced by individual member states within the European Union. There is also a sense that over the last few years some of the spending within the EU has not been as carefully controlled as it might have been. This is an opportunity for the EU to review its own budgeting process and I very much hope that it will be supported by other member states in due course.