Andrew Duff MEP

Britain's European Party no longer?

If Meeting the Challenge is about defining a future purpose for the Liberal Democrats, it has to be comprehensive. The policy review should take nothing for granted. It surely cannot ignore the party¡¦s stance on Europe. While tax and spend policies are the battleground of day-to-day politics in Britain, it is Europe that remains the great divide.

Controversy about Britain¡¦s European future continues to shape the fortunes of its political parties. Successive Tory and Labour governments have left the issue hopelessly unresolved. British public opinion remains fairly hostile to the idea of a united Europe. The UK is exceptional among the older member states of the European Union in having yet to forge a bipartisan consensus on the issue of membership. Tony Blair¡¦s failure to remedy Britain¡¦s European predicament will, with Iraq, blight his term of office. The Conservatives are unique among centre-right parties in opposing both the euro and the constitution and in flirting with renegotiation of the terms of their country¡¦s membership. The lack of a national agreement to consolidate UK membership and to contribute fully to the European integration process not only undermines British influence in the EU and in the wider world but also destabilises the EU itself. The UK is seen widely as an untrustworthy partner.

The Liberal Democrats and their predecessor parties have been noted ¡V if, sometimes, for little else -- for their vocation as Britain¡¦s truly European party. Europe is our brand. Lib Dems have a European identification. We have espoused the cause of a more united Europe both for historic and contemporary reasons. The European Union continues to be a powerful source and stimulus of political reform. If the UK is capable of modernisation, as Lib Dems would wish, it will have to modernise along European norms: proportional representation, the concept of citizenship and the codification in law of fundamental rights are European phenomena. The Good Friday agreement would have been inconceivable outside the context in which both the UK and Ireland were fellow members of the EU. Devolution to Scotland and Wales and the gradual regionalisation of England emulates European trends.

Much of Meeting the Challenge involves, quite rightly, the operation of the state in the market economy. Yet Britain¡¦s market economy is an integral component of the European single market, and it is the European Union that manages and regulates that market place. Decisions about the regulatory framework inside which the British economy operates are taken at EU and not at national level. It is the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament not the Westminster parliament which legislate about the pace and scope of market integration. The EU collectively and not the UK on its own decides about the size of the market and, via the common commercial policy, about trade between that enlarged European market and the rest of the world. The EU has already obliged Britain to adapt for the better its care for the environment, its consumer protection, its animal welfare, its practices of health and safety at work, its women¡¦s pay -- and much else besides. The process of developing the single market is far from complete: in the current legislative period alone there are vitally important EU measures being enacted on the regulation of chemicals, the restructuring of aviation, the harmonisation of patents, and the liberalisation of the services sector.

Political parties that want to be taken seriously as a potential UK government must grapple squarely with the European Union dimension to national life. How the EU is run and by whom matter a lot to how Britain works, and it is highly unlikely that any serious response to the challenges of globalisation, about which the Meeting the Challenge consultation document is eloquent, can be made by the UK alone without its EU partners. Indeed, any political party which claims to be able to make radical changes to the national economy without reference to the EU dimension should be deemed by the electorate to be pretentious and irresponsible.

The consultative paper

The authors of the consultation paper Meeting the Challenge claim that the party is still ¡¥unequivocally pro-European¡¦. But it is a claim that they do not substantiate. Rather, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the Liberal Democrats, just like Labour, would treat UK membership of the European Union as a political risk that has to be minimised.

The paper classes the EU as one among several ¡¥international organisations¡¦ of which the UK is a member. It identifies only the need for a ¡¥national image¡¦ to complement the ¡¥local image¡¦ of the party; the party¡¦s long-standing European image gets no mention. The authors regret ¡¥popular resistance to remote multilateral institutions¡¦ but cannot suggest how this might be countered. The fact that the EU might be in a position to help with finding optimum solutions to the plethora of social, cultural, physical, security, industrial and environmental problems is not identified.

The consultation paper says almost nothing about influencing European policy outcomes or about how to improve EU public policy in order to achieve Lib Dem objectives. Nothing at all is said about the EU budget. There is no mention of the Lisbon strategy for the structural reform of the EU economies, and the party¡¦s long-standing commitment to join the euro seems to have been dropped. Of the extension of the single market into the service sector, both financial and otherwise, we hear nothing. The stability and growth pact ¡V which has just been reformed to bring it into line with Lib Dem thinking -- is written off as ¡¥defunct¡¦. Discussion about reform of the CAP is half-baked.

Meeting the Challenge at once misrepresents and underestimates the new EU constitution and ignores the current ¡¥period of reflection¡¦ on how to reach an eventual constitutional settlement. The consultation paper claims that the constitution ¡¥has been our answer when asked how we would define and limit the powers of the EU¡¦. That, of course, is the response of an instinctively eurosceptic party: and as a basis for policy it will surely fail ¡V as it has always failed when tried in the past -- to convince pro-Europeans to support us in larger numbers than they do. Unequivocal pro-Europeans would campaign for the constitution on the grounds that it enhances the capacity of the Union to act effectively at home and abroad; it strengthens the rule of law and parliamentary democracy at both EU and national levels; it makes binding the modern Charter of Fundamental Rights and strengthens European citizenship; it provides the wherewithal for a real common foreign, security and defence policy; it rationalises instruments and streamlines decision-making procedures; and it clarifies and to some extent simplifies what has previously been obscure and complicated. The constitution is not, as the authors of Meeting the Challenge would have us believe, a narrowing but a broadening of EU competence ¡V notably by bringing the development of the EU¡¦s common area of freedom, security and justice within the single institutional and judicial framework. The constitution offers a durable settlement of habitual institutional rows while providing sufficient flexibility for the EU to evolve in the future. Liberal Democrats favour the enlargement of the Union: it is the constitution which ensures that the widening and deepening of the Union can proceed simultaneously.

Period of reflection

The constitution is not, of course, perfect. Now that its ratification is stalled, the constitution could and should be modified in order to meet the genuine concerns expressed by French and Dutch voters. The European Parliament is to kick-start the renewal of the constitutional process in January 2006, and the Austrian presidency of the Council will pick up the gauntlet in June. As part of that process, each political party, including the UK Lib Dems, will be asked to articulate its policy on the future of the EU. One might have hoped for some inkling of what that policy might be in Meeting the Challenge. A truly radical policy review inside a European party should ask itself some fairly fundamental questions about the goal of European integration today. What role should Europe have in the world? In the light of the challenges of globalisation, what is the best model for the European social market economy? How should we define the boundaries of the European Union? And do we want to live in a united European constitutional democracy or not?

In strictly party terms, these questions can be expected to trigger a number of important and positive conclusions. Yes, there is a need for Britain to have a political party that would commit the government of the country unequivocally to the goal of a united, post-national democracy. Yes, Liberal Democrats still believe in our long-confessed objective of getting Britain to be a full player in all aspects of European integration. Yes, we will continue to work to get sterling to join the euro and to salvage the constitution. And, yes, we will campaign among British public opinion for pro-European policies.

As far as our party¡¦s contribution to the period of reflection is concerned, we will need to rationalise and organise our priorities. Everyone will have their own favourite topics; I have four, as follows:

"« to strengthen the rules of economic governance of the Union in order to give the eurozone more autonomy, and to bring more cohesion to economic policy and more discipline to fiscal policy;

"« to articulate an unambiguous framework for the organisation of economic society ¡V the European social model ¡V that provides diverse but not divergent solutions to Europe¡¦s social problems and that emphasises the common link between investment (both public and private) on the one hand and employability, on the other;

"« to up-grade climate security policy to become the driving imperative of the other EU common polices, notably the CAP and energy;

"« to clarify how the Union will define its future borders in order to give citizens a better sense of security within their new, post-national political society.

A judicious renegotiation of the constitution along such lines during 2008-09 would coincide with the overhaul of the EU¡¦s financial system (including the UK rebate) which has been agreed in theory by the European Council in December.

The whole new package could be put to a consultative ballot across the EU on the same day as the European Parliamentary elections in June 2009. Such a campaign would be a great opportunity to cast the reforming, strengthened European Union in a positive light. If Liberal Democrats are in the vanguard of those who say Yes to Europe, we will have met the challenge.

Meeting the other challenge

The party¡¦s consultation exercise is ¡¥designed to prepare the party for fighting the next general election¡¦. That election is likely to be on the same day or very close to the next European Parliamentary election, which is fixed for June 2009. This essay has been about how the party is in real danger of neglecting the European dimension. The electoral timetable accentuates the need for ensuring a well integrated campaign between European, national, regional and local levels.

While it is natural to have tensions between political forces attached to different tiers of a system of multi-level governance, it is in everybody¡¦s interests to ensure the maximum possible coordination of policy. Federalism does not work well where one level is subordinate to another and where each is not coordinate. The British political system has devised no mechanism for such fluent coordination between parliamentarians with different mandates. A review of the EU scrutiny system is in train at Westminster; we should back its radical reform, and reflect its reform in our own party operations. Reflecting the disjunction between the EU and national parliamentary life, every political party is experiencing the problem of a growing divergence of agenda and opinion between MEPs and MPs. Not least as Britain¡¦s European party, the Liberal Democrats need to take active steps to counter this divergence and to minimise the risk that in 2009 we will be fighting on two different platforms.

Political parties are the spinal cord of European parliamentary democracy. They are also invariably weak, and weakened further by the flight to referendum on the EU constitution in many member states. As part of the period of reflection it is proposed that there should be a series of Parliamentary Forums involving European and national parliaments to engage in a joint debate during 2006-07 on the future of Europe. When British Lib Dem MPs, peers, MSPs and MEPs participate in these Forums they will be sitting as members of the Alliance for Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). This, too, offers us a good opportunity to meet our European as well as domestic challenges.

Andrew Duff is the Liberal Democrat MEP for the East of England and spokesman on constitutional affairs for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.