The EU is a permanent coalition government. Yet debate in the UK centres not on this, but on UK sovereignty. This permanent coalition offers opportunities for reform of our society – and our politics.
The EU is a coalition in all but name. Both the directly-elected parliament and the Council of Ministers pass new laws while the Commissioners – all nationally chosen ministers – determine how to uphold the interests of the EU. No single party can impose its will and alliances shift continuously. This flexible coalition has created a full consensual set of policies to address both national and EU needs. The policies often come with money too. So we pay in and the EU pays out – as UK regions well know.
Many of the policies commend themselves. They are cherries ripe for the picking. But we choose not to pluck them – or at least to appear not to.
Take infrastructure and innovation. EU ministers have a single forum to coordinate and prioritise what is needed to keep us or make us globally competitive . Across all areas of Research, Development and Innovation, 44 infrastructures were prioritised in 2008 for the environment, engineering, health, physics and social science. The next update will focus on energy, food and biology. This systematic way of coordinating and prioritising ‘RDI infrastructure’ makes the methods we have in the UK seem amateurish and ramshackle.
Or consider EU efforts to keep industry in Europe. For big pharma this means having the right healthcare, education, IT and RDI environment. Otherwise companies will commit to other parts of the world. The Commission has tackled this through a ‘Joint Undertaking’ between industry and public stakeholders. This Innovative Medicines Initiative is worth €10bn split 50:50 between the Commission and industry.
With a roadmap to back it up, the Commission has similar initiatives in computing, aeronautics, nanoelectronics and fuel cells . By comparison, the nature and scale of the UK’s efforts have been risible.
Then there’s growth and jobs. Look at the five targets for the EU in 2020:
1. 75 per cent of the 20-64 year-olds to be employed
2. 3 per cent of the EU’s public and private GDP to be invested in R&D / innovation
3. Greenhouse gas emissions 20-30 per cent lower than 1990; 20 per cent of energy from renewable; 20 per cent increase in energy efficiency
4. School drop-out rates below 10 per cent; over 40 per cent of 34 year-olds completing tertiary education
5. At least 20 million fewer people in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion
All these targets are backed up with policies and support for their implementation.
It’s time to end the age-old pretence that policy development for the UK occurs only in the UK. In truth, UK policy makers have often picked policy cherries from elsewhere, but only acknowledge this when it suits them. There are plenty of good ideas coming from EU institutions. UK policymakers should pick the cherries and proclaim their EU origin because we helped pay to grow them, because it’s honest, it counters excessive nationalism and, most significantly, it fosters collegiality and consensus between politicians as a profession.
Fostering this collegiality and consensus is a big, big cherry. It recognises that no one party is always right. It undercuts ‘yah-boo’ bipartisan politics. It cultivates a mature politics based on reason, not dogma. It reclaims respect for the profession of politics.
The EU is a forum with this collegial culture where policy is made and remade. Policy change is not a weakness. It’s natural. So there is no getting trapped in Plan A, no sin in U-turning. Most Labour minds are open to the re-shaping of our national politics that would flow from aligning to this EU culture – as are most Lib Dem minds. Some Labour and most Tory minds remain closed: they are too comfortable with bipartisan politics.
Making this cultural change offers political parties their holy grail. They gain a power that bipartisan politics precludes: the power to renew themselves when in office. They can avoid that dearth of fresh ideas of which Labour complained after May 2010 and of which Labour accused John Major.
While Labour’s leaders have recognised the need for a more robust policy on the EU, so far the content of policy is limited to opposing Eurosceptic ‘repatriation’ of powers by urging ‘reform’ of powers . In other words, Labour remains fixated with the sovereignty debate: do we chop off or prune our own branch of the EU tree? But the real issue is how best to strengthen its roots and how best to pluck each and every euro-cherry on the tree.
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Martin Yuille is a reader in biobanking at the University of Manchester. He writes here in a personal capacity.
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