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.

    22/96 (page 6)
    [Mr Canavan Contd] becoming clear; the Danish position is becoming clear. I do not think many people and certainly I would not favour hanging around doing nothing in this position of uncertainty until everything was totally cleared by everybody else. I do not think it would be in fact, because they would naturally say, “Well, what are the British doing? We can’t be expected to dot our Is and cross our Ts when they are just sitting on their backsides doing nothing”. I think that the time has come to ask Parliament to look at this again. There is one point you made, Mr Canavan, which is often made: the Danes tech- nically did not, in their first referendum, kill the Treaty. The Danish Government, after their refer- endum, came to us and did not say, “The Danish people have rejected the Treaty and therefore we gone against the Treaty; we need time to consider the options”. So technically they did not kill the Treaty, although obviously a lot of the debate and anxiety and change which has taken place since then takes account of what the Danish people did. 17. You yourself said a few minutes ago, Secretary of State, that ratification by Denmark is absolutely essential? (Mr Hurd) That is right. 18. But we do not know yet what the Danish compromise is going to be, yet in a few weeks you are going to be asking the British Parliament to approve of something in principle when we do not know what we are going to be approving of, because it will not be agreed at the earliest until the Edinburgh summit in December. (Mr Hurd) Mr Canavan, in life if everybody waits for everybody else to complete a process it will not be completed. We have to make a judge- ment. We did not put the matter to the House in June or July. We have to make a judgement and the House has to make a judgement as to when is the right moment to proceed. It is clear that ten Member States either have ratified or are on course to ratify without substantial difficulty. It is clear that with one Member State, Denmark, its government is seeking to find a way of ratifying it. It is seeking to find a way: I am not overstating the argument. The question for us, as the other main remaining Member State, is whether in these cir- cumstances we wish to proceed or not. That is something that the House of Commons will have to decide. 19. Some of the Danish options would require an amendment to the Treaty. It would become a Maastricht Mark II, rather than a Maastricht Mark I, and so we would have to start from scratch again and bring that new agreement to the House of Commons, would we/not? (Mr Hurd) I think if you listened carefully to Mr Elleman-Jensen yesterday and to the Danish Prime Minister you would see how their own intentions are focusing on questions of addition and clarification, rather than re-opening the exist- ing text. Chairman 20. I do want to come on that question of addi- tion, but can I put Mr Canavan’s question in a slightly different way: given our parliamentary pro- cedures here, which may be different from other people’s, would it be right to distinguish between debating the principle, or re-debating it in a paving debate where, as you say, matters of judgement have to be made, and the actual detailed business of processing the legislation here which could lead towards implementation of the Treaty which might come later? Is it right to distinguish between those two processes, or do you see them all as one? (Mr Hurd) Obviously one does follow the other but they are separate processes. The paving debate is not technically a matter of the Bill at all, because the Bill has had its Second Reading. We have agreed to the request (at any rate, of some people in the House) that there should be such a debate, and that will be held first. What I cannot tell the Committee is when the Government would suggest that the House return to the Committee stage, because no decision has been taken on that yet. It obviously will be a long process because a lot of amendments will be tabled, quite rightly. I think our parliamentary process will be more thorough and more detailed probably than that of any other country, and will cover a wider range. The Government has to recognise that and prepare for that. That does affect the question of timing but, as I say, no decision has been taken on that and what would be suggested to the House. Chairman: Let us look at this question of add- ons, protocols, supplements and all the rest of it. Mr Lester 21. I think, Chairman, we have really gone into those in considerable detail already. Looking down what the Danish Government suggested in their White Book it appears the only one that is feasible is the possibility of introducing riders to the Maastricht Treaty which will become effective by all 12 Member States. Most of the others do in actual fact involve re-negotiation of the Treaty or a breaking of the agreement, when you have just said that it is vitally important that all 12 Members should be party to the Maastricht Treaty. They suggested that the other 11 could do it and they would stay out, they would join the European eco- nomic states and so on, changes to the Treaty as a whole, so the only one that seems feasible is the fact that they could introduce riders which would satisfy some of the fears of their people and then seek a further referendum. You have already dealt with the question of amendments to our own Bill because we cannot propose those until we actually know the timing of the Bill and how that fits in with the existing ratification, so the problem, as one sees it, is how one negotiates as far as Denmark is concerned and until that is completed,