Europe – we look on its works and despair
As the European project crumbles, Britain must seize its chance to negotiate a better deal
The European project is crumbling. Deeper integration had rested upon two pillars: the euro and the Schengen Zone – the common currency and the border-free area among most EU states. Now, suddenly, both constructions are cracking up. Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
It turns out that Schengen, like the euro, was a fair-weather scheme; like the euro, it failed when the storms came. Just as the debt crisis brutally exposed the weaknesses of the single currency, so the migration crisis made a nonsense of the dismantling of what Eurocrats call “internal” frontiers.
We see now how shallow and insular the Brussels elites have become. Their concern is to salvage the idea of deeper integration at any price. If keeping the euro intact means inflicting poverty and emigration on Spain, Italy and Greece, so be it. If keeping Schengen intact means incentivising millions from Africa and the Middle East to cross illegally into Europe, so be it.
The EU has become an end in itself. It isn’t about prosperity: if it were, there would have been an orderly dismantling of the euro years ago. And it certainly isn’t about making its member states get along better. Several governments are furious at having refugee quotas forced on them. As they see it, Angela Merkel invited hundreds of thousands of refugees to come to Germany, and is now seeking to export them to her neighbours.
Some British observers might be tempted to schadenfreude. We were, after all, repeatedly told that keeping the pound would condemn us to poverty and isolation. And, after years of being told by politicians from Romania and Slovakia that we were xenophobic because we wanted to control our borders, it’s amusing to see those politicians demanding the same thing.
We should, however, take no satisfaction in what is going on. The other EU states are our friends and our trading partners. It is painful to see them suffering because of the doctrinaire integrationism of Brussels officials.
At least we in this country have an opportunity to change the basis of our relationship with the EU. The question is whether we will seize it – and, so far, the signs are not encouraging.
When David Cameron first proposed a new relationship with the EU in his Bloomberg speech in 2013, he spoke of significant and, if necessary, unilateral repatriations of power. Yet this week, his foreign secretary told Continental reporters that the renegotiation was “not about British exceptionalism, but about making the EU work better for all Europe”.
In particular, ministers have decided to focus on migration and benefits – two areas that the PM didn’t mention at Bloomberg, and which have been chosen now because they can be addressed largely through domestic legislation, without needing a treaty change. Instead of asking “What deal would we ideally like with the EU?”, ministers are asking “What can we be certain of securing, so that we can declare the talks successful?”
It’s a missed opportunity. And it may fail even within the narrow terms that ministers have set. Immigration has never been among my reasons for wanting to leave the EU. I’m a Eurosceptic on democratic and economic grounds: as long as we’re members of the world’s only bloc with a shrinking economy, we can’t sign bilateral trade agreements with growing markets like India and Australia.
Still, even on ministers’ chosen battleground of immigration, they may struggle to convince voters. Immigration issues used to be settled only by unanimous agreement. From now, however, they are subject to the qualified majority voting system. Hands up anyone who thinks that, if Britain votes to remain in the EU, our opt-out will be respected. After all, we had the clearest opt-out that lawyers could devise on the Greek bailout.
Mr Cameron had a written agreement from the EU that no further British funds would be used to prop up the single currency. That agreement was torn up the moment Eurocrats found it inconvenient. Similarly, do you remember the way ministers claimed to have “halved the bill” when Britain was presented with a £1.7 billion surcharge for having had a successful economy? Well, guess what: that bill was settled in full after the general election.
I hope that, even at this late stage, ministers will change tack. Their plan to downplay expectations, stage a bogus row with France over corporation tax and then declare victory – the strategy revealed when Andrew Lansley’s speech to pro-EU lobbyists was leaked – won’t work. People want a free-trade-only deal with the EU, one where we can cooperate with our allies without having to accept that EU law has primacy over our own.
I had hoped we could secure such a deal through the renegotiation. But, if ministers are too timid to ask for it, never mind. We’ll get it when we vote to leave.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP