Article in
the Daily Telegraph early July 2001.
Lessons
Europe must learn from Ireland's 'No' to Nice
By Jack
Straw
Amid the
heat of the British political debate on Europe, one fact is often lost from
view: the countries of central and southern Europe see membership of the
European Union as the best guarantee of their stability, democracy and
prosperity.
Viewed from
Prague and Budapest - or indeed from Preston and Blackburn - Europe is the
future.
We want a wider Europe, because that means more jobs and more security for us, as
well as for the new nations
of the EU. The
Treaty of Nice will at last open the door to EU accession for the best prepared
of the candidate countries.
Today the
Commons will debate Britain's ratification of Nice. Watching from the gallery
will be Jan Kavan, my Czech counterpart. We have been counterparts before. We
first met in 1969, when he was in London to rally support after the hopes
raised by Dubcek's Prague Spring had been brutally crushed by the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia. I was the deputy president of the National Union of
Students: Jan was a student leader, too.
How far
Europe has come since then. Today, the Czech Republic is one of the most
successful of the new democracies that emerged across central Europe after the
fall of the Iron Curtain.
The goal of all their hard
work over the past decade and more has been EU membership. We should not
forget what a huge, historic project enlargement -
the reunion of Europe - is. Nice makes the EU
ready for reunion with our neighbours from whom we
were divided for nearly half a century.
Britain has
championed the cause of enlargement and played a key role in the Nice
negotiations. It is all part of
our policy of making the
world a safer place for the British people to live, travel and trade in. I have described
myself as a "practical European". I am determined to secure for
Britain
the practical
benefits of an enlarged European Union. Enlargement,
it is estimated, will boost
Britain's GDP by up to £1.75 billion a year,
through more jobs,.
Those who
oppose Nice risk stopping enlargement and
denying the British people
these gains to their security and well-being, as well as the benefits of an
enlarged single market of half a billion consumers.
And they would deny these
benefits to those whom we encouraged to break free from the oppression of the
Cold War. Nice
is essential for enlargement because, without it, the EU would grind to a halt
as it grew bigger. It is also a good treaty for Britain because, at Nice, Tony
Blair and Robin Cook
secured all our key
negotiating objectives Nice gives more votes in the Council of Ministers to
large countries such as Britain. Otherwise we could have been outvoted in an
enlarged EU by countries with smaller populations. But Britain keeps the same
number of votes as Germany, even though Germany has a bigger population.
Nice reforms
and streamlines the European Commission. In return for greater influence in the
council, the large countries agreed to keep one commissioner each. This will
stop the commission from turning into a mass meeting. And Nice extends majority
voting into some new areas where we want reform, such as trade in services and
industrial policy, while at the same time
maintaining our veto on
areas of
such vital national interest as tax, social security and defence.
All these
key objectives were
set out in advance and achieved in
full. At every
stage we have kept Parliament and the public fully informed. More than any previous
European negotiation, this debate has been carried out in full view of the British
public.
As always, Parliament will
have the final say on whether Britain ratifies this treaty.. It is fundamental to
the democratic legitimacy of the EU that changes to the founding treaties do
not take place until and unless the constitutional procedures of all member
states have been satisfied.
In Britain, ratification of
such treaties as Nice, and Maastricht before it, have been a matter for
Parliament.
In Ireland, the constitution requires a referendum - and the Irish people
recently voted "No". We respect this
"No" vote If Ireland does not ratify, the treaty will not come
into force. But as with
the Danes' original "No" to Maastricht, we hope that, in time, an
affirmative vote in Ireland may be possible.. The Irish government has said
that it needs to deal with particular issues with its electorate. It has also
said that we should all proceed with our own ratification of Nice. There is no
question of a wholesale renegotiation. But we all need to learn lessons from
Ireland's experience. The institutions of the EU cannot afford to leave the
people behind. We must acknowledge and address people's anxieties and more
convincingly persuade doubters that Britain is better off in Europe.
We must do
more to convince people that we have everything to gain by playing our role as
a European power with the clout and confidence to shape the EU in our
interests. We must make
the case that the only way in which we can build our kind of Europe is by
winning friends and winning arguments, not by isolating ourselves..
The next EU
treaty, due in 2004, will therefore be preceded by a wider public debate about
the future of Europe, so that Europe's citizens
can far better influence what the EU should do and what it should not.
One thing is clear. Jan Kavan and his fellow citizens know what foreign domination means. And they would not be trying to join the EU if they thought it would cost them their freedom. They want to take their rightful place in a Europe of nation states. The Nice Treaty will enable them to do so.
Yet another prime example of eurobilge. It is sad that the Foreign Secretary shows such a limited ability to state the truth and such a great ability to spout non-sequiturs and patent nonsense. 9 out of 10.