Relationship with EU takes new direction (Andrew Duff MEP)

Andrew Duff MEP <info@andrewduffmep.org.uk>

Relationship with EU takes new direction

December 27, 2011 12:02 PM
By Andrew Duff in East Anglian Daily Times

Nobody should underestimate the sea change which has taken place in Britain's stormy relationship with the European Union. Since the days of Harold Macmillan, forty years ago, successive Tory and Labour prime ministers have tried to keep the UK at the European Union's negotiating table. They have cavilled at this and grumbled at that. They have diluted the force and delayed the implementation of EU laws. They have erected defensive 'red lines' against some real or imagined foreign plot. They have won opt outs and cop outs from mainstream mainland European politics. They have made themselves unpopular and mistrusted. They have enfeebled Britain's moral authority and political clout. But they have all clung in there, kept a seat, been informed and been heard by our EU partners.

Suddenly, at the European Council meeting in Brussels on 8-9 December, all this changed. David Cameron and William Hague came to sabotage the new treaty designed to repair and prevent a repeat of the eurozone crisis. They waved a list of mostly spurious demands designed to protect the narrow interests of the City of London. They refused a good compromise on offer from the European Commission. They tried to veto the new treaty.

Of course, Mr Cameron and Mr Hague failed. Instead of blocking EU reform as they intended, they simply forced the other states to undertake the necessary reforms outside the formal framework of the European Union. This ruse is legally complicated and politically regrettable - but it will work in installing greater fiscal discipline among those states which already use or intend to use the euro.

And the new mini-treaty will be followed soon by further treaty reforms which will complete the transformation of the fiscal stability pact into a fully fledged fiscal union where, under strict conditions, the signatory states will accept joint and several liability for their sovereign debt. Only this step will reduce borrowing costs, stabilise the markets and prepare the ground for structural reforms and economic recovery.

Such fiscal solidarity among EU taxpayers of course needs democratic solidarity among EU citizens. The fiscal union will need a more federal type of economic government with clear lines of accountability to the European Parliament and the capacity to speak and act in a united way in global monetary matters.

It is greatly to be regretted that the UK will play no part in this next bold step in European integration. We will have to find a way of operating a new form of associate membership of the European Union, leaving the core group to set the agenda. Such detachment will delight the many nationalists and Europhobes in East Anglia. But those people do not reflect the true national interest.

Andrew Duff is the Liberal Democrat MEP for the East of England. www.andrewduff.eu