Towards a new Europe?

John Biffen

British membership of the European Community will not be an election issue. That however does not remove the topic from the political agenda. Le Monde has dismissed us as a nation where 'the language 'communautaire" ' is unknown. Indeed, it seems the more the British experience the EEC the more `gaulliste' they become. It is as well that our continental friends should know us for what we are. They should therefore read carefully the Callaghan letter on the EEC addressed to the general secretary of the Labour Party last September.

This letter emphasised: a) Maintenance Of the authority of national governments and parliaments b) Democratic control of Community business c) Common policies Must recognise the need for national governments to attain their economic, industrial and regional objectives d) Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and e) The development of a Community energy policy Compatible with national interests. Many Tories will echo those sentiments.

The Prime Minister concluded that the European Community is an organic and evolving body, and that 'the dangers which some have seen of an over-centralised, over-bureaucratic and over-harmonised Community will be far less with twelve Member states than with nine.' It is 'enlargement', then, which should provoke a constructive debate about the evolving institutions of the European Community.

The Treaty of Rome, for example, is now becoming an increasingly absurd written Constitution. It only operates in the breach. The 'Luxembourg Accord', which permitted the national veto to override the qualified majority voting provisions of the Treaty, looks more soundly established than ever. Furthermore Spanish membership is likely to confirm this situation.

A distinguished protagonist of British Membership of the European Community has been Michael Shanks, a former Director-General for Social Affairs in the European Commission. He has observed that 'the institutions of the European Community are facing a crisis of identity' and that 'ideally, the leaders of the Community should now be working on a new blue print' although he rather glumly concluded, 'given the present low ebb of polit ical will in the EEC, if would be a hazardous undertaking today to seek to draft a new Treaty.'

From another standpoint Russell Lewis, formerly of the European Commission Information Office and subsequently of the Conservative Political Centre, has argued that 'The main change in the character of the Community is that it is ceasing to be, as it originally promised, the means of liberating the productive energies of West Europeans, and has become instead a new corporate state, over-administered, on a European scale.' He argued, 'the cause of European unity would best be served at present by abolishing the Commission'. It will be seen, therefore, that a range of British voices express discontent and anxiety over the present institutions of the Community.

Futhermore the applicant countries must have a transforming impact upon the effective working of these institutions. The question is whether the Community should seek to accommodate and anticipate the changes that are portended.

There are two broad paths. The first path is to hasten the integration of the Community. It would make enlargement the pretext for abandoning the 'Luxembourg Accord' and insisting upon qualified majority voting. The integrationist policy would involve greater powers for a partnership of Commission and Assembly. The Commissioners formally renounce national interests and the Assembly — presumably — would develop trans-national political groupings. The Council of Ministers meanwhile would concede authority to the Commission/Assembly partnership and itself evolve into something like a powerful European Senate. Parallel with such a policy would be the development of a monetary union as recently outlined by Commissioner President Roy Jenkins and a co-ordinated harmonisation of indirect taxes and excise duties. It is a prescription that has modest but influential support in the United Kingdom.

Is there, however, an external circumstance that would compel a wider Brit ish opinion to support this cause? The Italian Ambassador, Roberto Ducci, has observed that 'the Community contains no inbuilt unifying force. The impulse must recurrently come from the outside, or the operation will fold up sooner or later.' And where is the external threat? The military presence of Russia? The technology of North America? The developing manufacturing industries of the third world?

In as much as these threats are military they emphasise the need for NATO co operation. Indeed that could be a political argument for enlargement which should help anchor the southern flank of NATO.

The European Community, and the Treaty of Rome in particular, has no formal military role. It seems perfectly likely that the somewhat informal and overlapping relationships between the EEC and NATO will persist.

Should the European Community, on the other hand, seek to find a close knit and integrated economic identity behind a tariff and quota wall that excluded the trade challenges from the United States, Japan and the developing Third World? I think not. There is general argument for seeking free trade with the very North American partners who are essential for defence. There is, indeed, sound economic sense for allowing many sophisticated engineering activities to have an Atlantic as well as a Community or a national basis.

Furthermore there is no 'enemy within' that is going to provide the 'impulse' to which Ambassador Roberto Ducci referred. If such a factor existed it would be Eurocommunism. There is — obviously — a certain attraction for some anti-communists to build a Community with such powerfully integrated political and economic institutions that Communist participation in any national government — Italy or France — would be harmless as power had already passed to Brussels. But if there was a deliberate transfer of powers away from national government because of the spectre of Communism, the upshot would be a powerful marriage of the ideologies of Marxism and nationalism; the latter disastrously reinforcing the former.

These, then, are some of the reasons why the European debate will not culminate in the political and economic integration of the European Community. The chosen path will be the evolution of a Europe of nation states.

This means that the European Community would accept the national veto in the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers would, in fact, develop as the major forum of Community decision-taking. The Ministers would be primarily responsible to national parliaments for the decision concluded; and also to national parliaments for the authority to enforce agreed Community policies. There would be a continued —and perhaps an enhanced — role for the thrice yearly summit meetings of heads of government. The Commission, obviously, would have a modified administrative role in servicing the Council.

These evolutionary changes would require amendments to the Rome Treaty — a few in number but substantial in impli cation. Essentially the Treaty would ack nowledge the national veto and thus incorporate the 'Luxembourg Accord.' It would also ensure that Community legislation was implemented through national parliaments. Such reforms could underpin a Community that represented the economic and cultural diversity of a twelve-nation Europe. It might, possibly, facilitate the membership of other nations.

It would be a Europe with sufficient flexibility and realism that could accommodate social pressures within and the changing ,balance of economic, political and military forces without. It would acknowledge what Margaret Thatcher proclaimed in Rome last year, namely 'I do not believe that the nation states in Europe will wither away.'