Europe after Maastricht : interim report : report, together with the Proceedings of Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendices : first report [of the] Foreign Affairs Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Foreign Affairs Committee.
Date:
1992
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Europe after Maastricht : interim report : report, together with the Proceedings of Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendices : first report [of the] Foreign Affairs Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/96 (page 2)
    [Chairman Contd] addenda to the Maastricht Treaty or are you talk- ing about a future agenda for Edinburgh when you speak of these aims? Are these things that all 12 countries will agree to or have we here the makings of yet another treaty to run alongside the present Treaty? I think there is a good deal of interest in how these highly desirable aims of openness and subsidiarity and so on are going to be packaged and whether the Maastricht process has to be reopened. (Mr Hurd) Openness and explanation obvi- ously do not require changes to the Treaty; they require changes in practice, procedures and style. As regards subsidiarity, there is an article in the Treaty of Maastricht, 3(b), which does not come into effect obviously until the Treaty is ratified. What was set in hand actually already at Lisbon and what we wish to carry forward at Birmingham and Edinburgh is operating this principle, showing how this principle will operate in practice. The Commission, under the impetus of Jacques Delors has already done a lot of work on this and he is considering it again today in advance of Birmingham and I hope that he will explain to us at Birmingham how far they have got. They are already amending their procedures so that before ideas are discussed in the Commission on their merits, there is a preliminary discussion as to whether they are actually necessary, whether action at the Community level is necessary for this pur- pose, however desirable the purpose. The Council of Ministers has to do the same and I would hope that between Birmingham, where we will be, I hope, enjoined to do this, and Edinburgh, where will have to report, the Council of Ministers like- wise will put this principle into its procedures because it is perfectly true, as defenders of the Commission and journalists report, that a lot of the action which needs to be affected by subsidiar- ity comes from the Council rather than from the Commission, the different councils, the different councils dealing with different things, and then the Parliament also, the third institution, needs to tackle this and we will be discussing this with Dr. Klepsch. Now, we have the article in the Treaty, so as far as subsidiarity is concerned we are not talk- ing about further articles of the Treaty or changing the Treaty, but we are talking about showing how procedures of the institutions are going to apply this, what the tests are going to be, the criteria, and what examples there are of how this works on past legislation and on present proposals. So it is under the heading of “Subsidiarity, procedures, criteria, examples”. You have not asked me about the Danish situation, but that of course is another element which interlocks and really your question about form, the Treaty amendments, applies, I think, more absolutely, more clearly to the Danish question of how we handle that between Birmingham and Edinburgh than it does to this question of subsidiarity. Chairman: Well, we want to come to the Danish issue and their White Book which the Committee has only just seen in detail in a moment, as indeed we want to come to the delights of EMU and ERM, although not in detail because another sister Committee will be looking at these things this afternoon, so I think we can concentrate on these political reforms and how they fit in and that is really where we might usefully go now. Mr Hazris 5. The political reforms are excellent, but it is, do you not accept, Foreign Secretary, very, very late in the day to be talking about these issues? Here we have Parliament after all having given approval in principle to Maastricht and now we still have to flesh out subsidiarity? Last week’s — events, do you not accept, show that there is alarm alone in the country as a whole, and we have had the Danish referendum? Do you, therefore, accept my contention that it is late in the day to be talk- ing about these excellent ideals and will they not be seen rather as a panic reaction to what has hap- pened following the Danish rejection in the refer- endum, the French near-miss, and. all the controversy which has now boiled up over Maastricht? (Mr Hurd) It seems to me, Mr Harris, that I have actually been talking about it virtually non- stop for a year at least, which is why we have an article in the Treaty. I do not say it was done sin- gle-handed by the British but we have an article in the Treaty of a kind not imaginable in the Treaty of Rome, and certainly not present in the Single European Act. We have it because the British and the Germans said it must be there. Because of some of the events you mentioned—the Danish referendum, the French debate, the debate in this country and the debate in Germany—we have now a much clearer realisation among the partners with whom we deal. You only have to study what the President of the Commission said in public on this matter to see how the importance of this issue has come up in his mind. After the Council discussion last week we continue to see in the British press headlines about Britain been totally isolated, but in fact on this issue which the Committee is now talk- ing about the Germans are very strong and have put in a very strong paper. The Danes, as we saw from the Foreign Minister on television yesterday, are very strong. We are'strong; we have been strong for a long time. The President of the Commission is strong. Nobody in opposition— there are degrees of enthusiasm that I found when I did my rounds last week, but no-one is saying this is wrong, this is absurd. There are caveats and that is why we need discussion, but you have to take the tide when it flows; it is flowing now and we intend to take it. Mr Rowlands 6. You say, Secretary of State, that you are very strong, but it seems to me from what you have told us already that you are ruling out any possi- bility of actually improving the wording of Article