As we approach tomorrow’s make-or-break EU summit, Tories in the cabinet are using the occasion to try and get the EU treaties re-drafted. I have a message for you, Iain Duncan-Smith and friends – now is not the time to play party political games when the living standards and livelihoods of people all across the EU are at stake.
Of course the EU is not perfect. Those of us working day and night to make it better know that only too well. The CAP with its unhealthy tobacco subsidies still needs to be changed so that food costs less in the supermarket. Too many non-viable farmers are propped up by EU taxpayers. Export subsidies should help developing countries and not harm them. This sort of change does not need new treaties – it needs leaders who get in there and negotiate.
There is certainly EU taxpayers’ money wasted on EU institutions too. I see it once a month when MEPs, translators and European parliament staff schlep to Strasbourg, when we have a perfectly good parliament building in Brussels. Some EU policies are not well executed – the EU has done a terrible job in the UK explaining how it benefits all of us.
In recent years, Labour MEPs alone have been behind many EU benefits – we have taken a lead getting EU standards on climate change, we have supported vast swathes of legislation to curb the excesses of the financiers so as to avoid another financial crisis, and food labels across the EU now tell consumers far more about what they are actually buying.
The current EU may not be what any of us would have made in an ideal world, but that does not mean that Europe’s citizens do not need an EU. The single market has been a huge success in terms of both employment and consumer prices – just like America’s historic encouragement of trade between US states. As a result of the EU, Europe can speak with one voice on world trade. Britain’s interests are represented in a way they could not possibly be represented as one of many countries in the global melée. The world climate change conference is now underway in Durban, and again, Europe can speak with one distinctive voice. These are not challenges that can be sorted in any one.
Virtually all European countries are now in the EU. This does not mean that EU countries want to give any powers to Brussels that are best sorted out at member state level. David Cameron used to say that he wants to ‘repatriate powers’. When he says this, Cameron is not talking about wasteful subsidies – he is talking the EU-wide rights won by the Left on issues like maternity leave, working time, four weeks paid holiday and minimum wage. Of course these should be international issues – otherwise employers in one country will have to compete with employers in other countries in a permanently downward spiral.
The last EU treaty change took up seven years of EU time as it went through endless re-writes, changes, national referenda and rounds of special summits. The current crisis in euroland (those countries whose national currency is the euro) threatens the immediate well-being of all of us, as the euroland is by far our export market. Some fear that if the euro collapses the single market itself would be under threat. Now is not the time for navel-gazing referenda and confusion. Now is the time for concerted EU action supported by a British government safeguarding British interests.
Like other British governments over the last thirty years, Cameron also says he does not want a ‘two speed Europe’ (where Britain is on the periphery and left out of major decisions that affect the UK). He also wants his `repatriation of powers´. He cannot have both.
Let us hope that in these coming talks, David Cameron bravely ignores Iain Duncan-Smith and his friends and perhaps some of his earlier unwise commitments, and that he instead puts the interests of his country before the interests of his party.
Glenis Willmott is leader of the British MEPs and attends shadow cabinet
Photo: The Prime Minister’s Office