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

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.

20/96 (page 4)

$12 October 1992] [ Continued [Mr Lester Contd] because it is our view, the British view, that the adherence of Denmark, the ratification of Denmark, is absolutely essential and that they can- not be excluded from this process. It is worth say- ing that again because every now and then the idea crops up in other Capitals that somehow it would be possible to proceed without them and that is not our view. } Chairman: Our questioning is taking us on to Denmark, and perhaps we could go on to that. Mr Wareing 11. Foreign Secretary, it was obviously a very important statement which was made on television yesterday by Mr Elleman-Jensen where he made the statement that there was no question of a refer- endum being held in Denmark on the present basis of the Maastricht Treaty, that in fact there would have to be something rather different. Now, you have said that at Birmingham you are looking for a declaration, I believe it was, but in fact Mr Elleman-Jensen has said that he wants to see set up a set of rules on how and when decisions in com- mon can be taken. I want to ask you how you believe that we can help the Danes over this prob- lem because quite clearly they will have to be helped if the Maastricht Treaty is to mean any- thing at all and they have got to have another ref- erendum in order to put the Treaty into effect and yet Mr Elleman-Jensen was in a sense rather criti- cal of the British Government in one of the state- ments he made. He criticised Britain for their attitude over co-operation. He said that there was a suspicion that the United Kingdom is trying to re-nationalise—and I am sorry to use that word to a Conservative Foreign Secretary—to re-nation- alise on co-operation and what I think he meant was that he referred to environment and that has been very much in the news over the weekend, that in fact the question of the protection of wild birds has come up, the question of air pollution and Mr Elleman-Jensen made a distinction between those areas which were areas of European co-operation like the environment and those areas which were areas of subsidiarity and he mentioned education and health, although there were even areas of that such as the common acceptance of examination qualifications which he felt were areas of co-opera- tion. I wonder whether the Foreign Secretary would like to comment on those points made by the Danish Foreign Minister. (Mr Hurd) 1 think, Mr Wareing, you have wrapped up a good deal in one bundle. 12. I tried! (Mr Hurd) Your first question is how do we help the Danes. The sequence is, I think, this: that at Birmingham we will not be directly addressing, we will not be directly tackling phe Danish prob- lem. At Birmingham we will, however, be, I hope, adopting, the Heads of State and Government will, I hope, instruct the Council of Ministers on the questions we have been talking about in this Committee up to now, principally on subsidiarity. We will instruct them, we will give them precise instructions as to the work which has to be done by Edinburgh. Meanwhile the debate in Denmark will proceed on the basis of their White Paper, their eight options, and it will, I hope, come to a specific proposal, or proposals. Therefore, these two things, the work set in hand in Edinburgh and the discussion in Denmark, will interlock and come to a discussion at Edinburgh out of which, I hope, will come an agreement which will help to allay anxieties across the Community and be of particu- lar assistance to Denmark. As regards subsidiarity, it needs to cover the procedures of the three insti- tutions, how they actually set about sifting out . proposals to see which of them go through the sieve of subsidiarity and are proposals where the Community and which do not and where, however desirable the objective, they can be met by national means and that will be of help to the Danes. There will be then discussion—of course there will be dis- cussion—about what goes through the sieve and what does not and different countries will have dif- ferent views on that, of course. That is why it is not going to be possible to wrap it all up in one meeting and there will be views. As regards the environment, there is a European interest and there are matters on which there should be European rules. There are other matters where my own view is that subsidiarity should apply so we come to the one, wild birds, which I read about in the newspapers today. We do not actually believe that on the question of shooting of wild birds the Commission is proposing to take us to court because there is in fact a discussion going on and agreement within reach on that particular point of the shooting of wild birds and also the designation of the specially protected areas, the SPAs, so there is discussion going on, but my own personal view is that these are not things which the Community ought to put its hand to in the form of detailed regulation. I do not think so. They are desirable objectives and how they are actually carried through should be, I believe, a matter for national governments acting in the light of national tradi- tions and national feelings. 13. I just wondered, on the question of instruc- tions being given to the Council of Ministers, that one of the points that was made by the Danish Foreign Minister yesterday was on the question of openness. He suggested that the public should be, as it were, admitted and there should be in fact open meetings of legislative sessions of the Council of Ministers. Well, is the British Government in favour of that, particularly in the light of the need to give the British people more information about what Maastricht really means to them? (Mr Hurd) \ am certainly in favour, we are cer- tainly in favour of more openness and one of the things I have been discussing as I did my rounds in Lisbon and Madrid and The Hague and Brussels and so on last week was precisely this and there are various ideas for greater openness. People are$