Some months ago my sister asked me for guidance on the EU as she was undecided. To help clarify my own thoughts I wrote this little essay. I don't know whether it helped my sister, but anyway here it is).
Plenty of clever people have written detailed histories and
analyses of the EU, backed up by tomes of evidence and statistics, and have
come to opposite or conflicting conclusions.
I can’t really add anything worthwhile to those essays, but these are my
own personal thoughts.
I am instinctively pro-European. I studied languages at school (mostly French,
German and Latin) and was exposed to classical and modern European literature,
music and culture. In my youth I made
several visits to France and Germany (including 3 months working in
Mannheim/Ludwigshafen in 1962) and more recently to most western and central
European countries, especially numerous visits to Czechoslovakia before and
after the fall of communism. I like much
of what I have seen, and I especially like France. I worry a little about recent political
developments in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, but these reservations are
relatively minor.
I greatly welcome the influence that continental Europe has
had in eroding the infuriating insularity of the UK – on food and drink,
measurement units, the arts and the media.
By contrast I abhor the pernicious influence of the USA –
its brash dumbed-down culture, its free market ideology, its hi-jacking and murder
of the English language, its dysfunctional constitution and politics, its
arrogant assumption that America is best and is entitled to impose its culture
and politics on the rest of the world.
So I am instinctively pro-European.
However, Europe is not the same as the European Union (or
European Economic Community, as it used to be known).
The theory behind the original Schuman/Monnet plan (ca 1950,
I think, when the priority was to reconcile France and Germany after WW2) was
that if you locked together the economies of the major countries, then war
would be unthinkable, and it would lead to political union – a United States of
Europe. I think they got it wrong. They should have gone for political union
first, and the economics would have followed.
They also made the mistake of imposing a supranational bureaucracy (the
Commission) on the independent nation states, backed by a weak and relatively
powerless European Parliament. Although
there was no European “government”, the Commission has a monopoly of proposing
legislation: neither the Council of
Ministers (representing the nation states) nor the Parliament can initiate
legislation. The rules of “qualified
majority voting” (or unanimity) make it difficult to agree new policy – let
alone change a policy once agreed.
The underlying ideology of the founding Treaty of Rome
(effectively the constitution) was basically free market capitalism, and a
major role of the Commission is to police the single market and restrict the
role of national governments and parliaments in managing and regulating the
economy and society more generally. So
in the 1975 referendum I voted “No” to continued membership.
Things began to change in the 1980s, especially under the
socialist Commission President, Jacques Delors (1985-95), supported by French
President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. To the fury of Margaret Thatcher, Delors
introduced or expanded the “social dimension” of the EU – including the Working
Time Directive, and environmental and health and safety legislation. This changed the balance of the argument, and
I viewed the EU in a different light.
Initially, I supported the single currency project (also a
Delors/Mitterrand/Kohl project) and the Schengen passport-free travel project.
However, the implementation of both turned out to be flawed, and it is as well
that John Major and Gordon Brown kept the UK out of the Euro currency. As Margaret Thatcher correctly perceived, a
single currency requires a single monetary policy (interest rates, money supply
and inflation target) complemented by a single economic and fiscal policy (taxation,
public expenditure and employment target) – which means a single government.
(This goes back to the flawed decision to put economic union before political
union). The travails of Greece and the
de facto hegemony of Germany illustrate this.
Likewise, a passport-free travel area requires a common
external border control, coupled with internal control via identity cards
(which, inexplicably, seem to be anathema in the UK). The current immigrant
crisis has exposed the weaknesses in the Schengen system.
So what are the pros and cons of EU membership? Here is a selection (probably not an
exhaustive list)
Pro
- · I feel European – sharing the heritage of Beethoven, Leonardo and Voltaire, the cuisine of France, the architecture of Italy and Greece, the engineering achievements of Germany, the scenery of the Alps, the Mediterranean and the Rhine Valley.
- · The EU has indeed made war between Germany and France unthinkable.
- · It prevents national governments from discriminating on grounds of nationality, race, sex, age etc (though, sadly, religious discrimination is permitted).
- · It facilitates trade amongst member states by eliminating tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade.
- · It sets minimum standards of employee rights, health and safety and environmental protection
- · It promotes equality by transferring wealth from richer to poorer countries
- · It ensures self-sufficiency of the EU in most agricultural products and protects fish stocks from over-fishing
- · It enables unemployed people in one member state to work, pay taxes and draw benefits (including health services) in another member state
- · It enables people from one member state to live and own property in another member state
Cons
- · The freedom of individual states to pursue their own policies and pass their own laws is constrained by treaty obligations and EU directives (the loss of individual sovereignty) [Depending on your viewpoint, this might be considered a “pro”]
- · The democratic deficit in the EU – the relative powerlessness of the European Parliament, and the ability of governments (in the Council of Ministers) to block or retard new policies
- · The presumption in favour of private enterprise and against public enterprise
- · The ideology underlying the European Central Bank and the Euro currency is flawed and tends to restrain economic and employment growth, leading to social unrest especially in southern Europe (which indirectly affects the UK)
- · The Schengen passport-free zone, while an admirable objective, requires a rethink in the light of the migration crisis
- · Some of the newer members (e.g. Hungary) have unsavoury, nationalist regimes
- · The eastward expansion, especially into the Baltics (cf. NATO), has unsettled Russia and provided a pretext for President Putin to pursue aggressive, nationalist policies to reinforce his corrupt, authoritarian regime.
Britain’s place in the world
But perhaps, overriding all this is the question: What is
Britain’s place in the world in the 21st century?
100 years ago Britannia still ruled the waves (just). The sun never set on the Empire, and a
quarter of the world’s population were ruled from Whitehall. Today we are a prosperous but rather
vulnerable nation state on the north west of Europe – population ca 65 million
out of a world population of 7 billion (i.e. just under 1%). We are vulnerable in that we cannot produce
enough food for our population, and we struggle to export enough manufactured
goods and services to pay for our imports (the trade deficit). We cling to memories of past glories, our
victories over Napoleon and Hitler (not to mention the Argies), our (non-) independent
nuclear deterrent, our permanent seat at the UN Security Council and our
“punching above our weight” as Douglas Hurd once put it. For now we are still the 5th or 6th
largest economy in the world, but that will not last, as populations and living
standards rise in India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia etc.
Apart from our dependency on imported food, we face many
other challenges (mostly related to world overpopulation): climate change, pollution, exhaustion of
natural resources, international migration (the backwash of poverty and foreign
wars), religious fanaticism and foreign authoritarian regimes (such as Russia
and China).
Are we better able to deal with these challenges alone – or
in co-operation with neighbouring states with similar economies, societies,
histories and culture? The question surely
answers itself. And if we need to
co-operate with like-minded countries, is it better to do it on an ad hoc basis
as crises occur – or within an organised framework of established law and
institutions in which we have an important voice? Again the answer is clear.
Moreover, what would our EU partners think of us if we decided
we didn’t like them any more and no longer wanted to co-operate on matters of
trade, migration, agriculture, fishing etc and contribute a fair share to the
common budget? Would they be more likely
to want to help us if/when we hit problems of our own – such as BSE, foot and
mouth disease, the banking crash, or a sterling crisis? Of course, the opposite is the case.
So, although the EU is not perfect, I shall be voting to remain.
© 2016 Robin Paice
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