This year’s Hands Lecture on Europe delivered by Peter Mandelson last week contains both a declaration of confidence in the future of the eurozone a time when its fortunes seem precarious and a bold call for a referendum on Britain’s role in Europe at a time when the voices calling for that most loudly are on the Tory backbenches. So far, so controversial.
But his analysis of where we have arrived at, as European nations acting together, is typically clear sighted. The European Union was a project which started as a political ideal, became an economic necessity and is now ‘to a degree’ part of our hinterland. But what comes next is a challenge on grand scale – the future of the eurozone core of the EU will only be secured by fiscal integration involving huge transfers of economic value from its richest to its poorest regions. Mandelson questions whether the people of Europe have an appetite for remaking the eurozone as a fiscal – and therefore to a large extent, political – union. The answer seems to be clear from election results in the Netherlands and this week in Greece, Germany and France – they are not. Or at least not yet.
An acceptance of collaboration and cooperation in trade, energy and security matters is not the same as institutional integration of tax and public spending. ‘We feel like a broad community. We are more ambiguous at this stage about the idea of union’.
Nevertheless, his view of the future of the EU is built on the assumption that within a decade, the UK will be the only state outside the eurozone. I am pretty sure that we will be outside the euro in 2022 but given its current difficulties it seems to me far from certain that we’ll be alone.
Given that we and other EU states may be outside the euro for quite some time to come, there needs to be a recognition that being outside the eurozone is not a second-class status, but a choice that 10 EU members have made. Mandelson suggests the need for institutional reform, not just within the eurozone (which seems inevitable) but across the EU. But we need to proceed carefully – we have exhausted the public’s appetite for institutional debate – and any reform should include some recognition of the non-euro countries as a distinct bloc, just like the eurozone, within the EU. The reality is that for many of the non-euro members, the goal is ultimately to join, but if there are countries who see their future outside the euro, it is right that EU-wide institutions support and reflect this.
However the EU responds institutionally, the UK is probably going to remain outside any euro-based fiscal union for a long time to come. This poses an increasing risk of marginalisation in European economic decision-making, certainly if there is no recognition of the distinct status of non-euro members. The present government seems reconciled to that. But polls bear out a concern that Britain does not have enough of a voice in Europe, suggesting that if Britain’s leadership role was more tangible, the support for Europe might be deeper. So what we must not allow is a creeping anti-Europeanism in UK political debate. The history of our relations with Europe suggest that at some point in the future our view of our economic and political relationship with the rest of the EU will move towards greater integration.
Mandelson believes that when the new shape of Europe is known a referendum will be needed to settle the UK’s position. That may ultimately be the case – but if we are not to find ourselves putting our future prosperity at risk we need to engage the British public much more profoundly than we have in the past in a mature discussion of what Europe means for Britain, British jobs and our place in the world.
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Jeremy Miles is a candidate for the National Policy Forum in Wales
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Peter Mandelson’s message is that the UK has been semi-detached from the EU and this failure fully to engage is becoming critical.
But what do we do about it?
Jeremy Miles urges a “mature discussion of what Europe means for Britain, British jobs and our place in the world”.
That’s not enough. First, the discussion needs to go far wider than what the EU means for national identity, economics and foreign policy.
It needs to include the environment, research, development and innovation, health, safety, transport, communications, industrial policy, equality, social justice, education … there is a huge amount of policy making going on in and around the institutions of the EU.
Second we need to acknowledge when we espouse or implement EU ideas. We need to proclaim an idea as coming from elsewhere in the EU when that is what’s happened. It strengthens the case for that idea because EU ideas arise through a search for consensus across EU institutions and Member States.
And that raises my third point. The EU raises basic issues about the nature of our own democracy. Ours is based on majority decision. The EU’s democracy is increasingly based on “co-decision” i.e. a compromise between the views of the European Parliament, the “Council of Ministers” (heads of governments) and the European Commission. This is an advanced form of democracy – well ahead of the ‘lobby fodder’ basis of the UK Parliament. What lessons can we draw from “co-decision” for the strengthening of national and regional democracy in the UK?
The terms of debate have been set by fantasists from Farage to EDL via Rees-Mogg who hanker after a past that never was. Their ignorance has to be challenged. Widening the terms of debate can not only benefit UK (and EU) society, it can also weaken extremist conservatism.