Gravesham and Dartford Liberal Democrats

What Has Europe Ever Done For You

What has Europe ever done for you

First, I do not like this title, I prefer a positive What Europe does for you. However - we have to acknowledge that this is often how it is phrased - indeed on Monday in the Independent they used just the same phrase!

So I could cheat and read the newspaper to you, but since you can all do that for yourselves I will go about it my way.

I do wonder whether one day we should have a session entitled 'What has Government ever done for you' and see what we get out of that!

I would like to subdivide my response into four categories.

The history thing

International effectiveness

Free trade and the single market

Legislation

The first three of these are mainly the philosophy, but it is no good having a list without knowledge of the underlying principles. In the last section I will give some examples especially where the Parliament is involved.

I can also be brief in the first two sections, because I know you know it all, and also because the criticism of the title is aimed more at the substance of the latter two sections.

So first what I have called the history thing.

We all know that Europe spent a lot of time at war. Even when we seemed well clear of war, for example when I was at school, there were still many countries where the regimes left much to be desired - Spain, Portugal, Greece - all now rather more famous as holiday destinations - and of course East Germany and other Soviet bloc countries. We should not underestimate the peace we have had, and if for younger people war is all to remote, they should nevertheless recognise that the peaceful democratisation of Eastern Europe and joining the EU, which maybe seemed a smooth transition, could so easily have been different without the EU to aspire to.

My second point: International effectiveness

There is no doubt that the EU is more effective in some matters because it acts together. The environment is a good example. There are other areas where it is less successful, but that is usually also where there is not real power, such as in foreign affairs, because that remains with the individual Member States. Other countries far prefer to negotiate one deal rather than 27 bilateral agreements. Indeed the same applies within the EU - we do one deal rather than 26.

But again I will pass on quickly from this although there are lots of interesting topics here such as international development which is always close to the heart of Lib Dems.

So now we come to Free trade and the single market

Of course we have always had trade, sometimes more free than other times, and there are other organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, the European Free Trade Area, that aim at or have free trade. But that is not the same as a single market into which goods and services can circulate as freely and easily as in a domestic market. The single market is about size mattering. Most of the goods we buy and many of our services are cheaper now because of the twin effects of economy of scale and competition. So consumers benefit from this, but so do jobs because keeping prices competitive is important in the global market place just as much as it is for consumer prices at home. And competitiveness in the global market is about keeping jobs.

But it is not that easy to create a single market that involves cross border trade because it is much more than just free trade. It means having similar rules when the alternative, different rules, would create some kind of bias. This is a big cooperative effort requiring a large body of rules and regulation, and monitoring. It did not happen at a stroke when it was agreed we should have the single market, and it is not finished yet. Its full establishment continues to give rise to legislation but we are also moving much more into the area of revision and monitoring and what in Euro jargon is called better regulation or less is more.

I like the idea of a grown up, more elegant, less in your face Europe, but we are wrong to use language that always criticises just as it would be wrong to speak about children in an entirely critical way. The EU is still a unique and exciting and growing up political development. After fifty years you may query why still growing up, but what one might call phase 2, the single market, is not fifty years old, it was born in the early 90s (Maastricht 1992) so it is still a teenager. So there have been teething troubles, but just as we would not suggest people should not have teeth in order to avoid teething troubles, neither should we flinch from facing some of the changes that making a single market has and must cause.

And this is where those who suggest one can have all the advantages of the EU without being part of it are wrong. Sure they may get the free trade. But they would also get all the rules and regulations too, just as Switzerland and Norway take, by choice but because that is the reality of what they have to do to access the market, yet they have not participated in the negotiations that made them. And I can tell you, EU legislation without the involvement of the UK would be very different and a lot less palatable than it is with our involvement. But we would still be taking it.

So now I move on to some of that legislation

So finally we come to what is has recently been going on with some examples from various committees.

Environment. I do hope that every time you see a recycling centre or bin you think of the EU. Sad to say I can remember us losing seats in Chiltern District because the Tories said all the recycling was an expensive, wasteful Liberal Democrat plot. How times have changed and of course as you all know the requirement to recycle came from the EU. And of course there have been more since with aircraft emissions and now shipping emissions also being put on the agenda.

The control and testing of chemicals will be revolutionised thanks to the REACH directive.

I have brought a booklet with me entitled 'What MEPs are doing about the Environment' and copies are on the Regional stands.

Civil Liberties The EU adopted a system of burden sharing for asylum seekers in the 1990s. Not only is this fair, which is the angle I prefer to take, it has also reduced the burden on the UK. The EU has also very strong rules on data protection and it is the EU that has been championing citizens in several recent breaches. Two examples are the supply of passenger information by airlines to the US and the second the supply of data on bank transfers using the SWIFT network. Both these infringed EU laws and it is the European Parliament that has pursued the matter, just as it also did the matter of CIA torture flights. More recently we have been looking at the liquid restrictions for flights, for which there is an EU regulation but it is secret so the public have no redress. Now all these subjects have the sniff at least of national Governments knowing or having tacitly or explicitly agreed something secretly. The Parliament is unearthing them and getting matters put, where relevant, on a democratic basis.

Employment It is the EU that led the way on preventing age and disability discrimination. It has also ensured that if you go to live in another EU country you do not lose your pension.

Industry Work is still ongoing with regard to the liberalisation of energy markets and just this week some of the first votes in committee were taken in order to bring down the costs of mobile phone roaming charges when you use a mobile phone abroad. Some of you may have noticed new tariffs on this being brought in over the last year, this has all been in respo0nse to EU action.

Economic committee Huge work has gone on and is still continuing to establish the single market in financial services. Even if you are not a direct user of stock markets, pension funds are so ordinary individuals are greatly affected by them. Rules made by the EU ensure that there is cross border responsibility for products such as mortgages when there are cross border mergers and takeovers. Continuing work will ensure that there are similar levels of safety and security behind banking and insurance both in business stability and consumer protection. The Euro has now taken over as the most traded or used currency in all financial areas and of course all this has benefited the City of London which, love it or hate it, provides a lot of jobs and income to the UK.

Legal Affairs. Every ear there are thousands of British citizens injured in accidents elsewhere in Europe. At the moment law firms specialising in such claims wrestle with 27 different sets of national laws on liability and compensation. We are now reaching the final stages of legislation that will make this much simpler with a common set of rules. Consumers have also been protected by legislation so that they can purchase goods cross-border with confidence.

Transport Any of you listening to the interviews with Richard Branson after the Virgin rail crash in Scotland will have heard him explain that the train withstood the crash as well as it did because it was built to EU standards. If you travel by plane and it is late, you get compensation because of the EU. Similar compensation schemes are now being worked on for rail transport delays.

There is more, a lot more, but that gives you a flavour. And again I must address the sceptical voices that say, but we did not need the EU for some of it. But that is not how it works.

In terms of competition and markets the UK is very competitive. But to get a single market and get access to it we have to have common rules. And this is where it can be frustrating - not least to a liberal from a liberal country as I and Dutch and Scandinavian colleagues find. And that is why I said earlier that we needed the UK to be in the negotiations because we need to move things our way. And when it does not go as far as we would like, we have to recognise that if we were on the outside the agreed practices would be further from ours and we would not have the easy access to the single market without accepting them. Nor would we be there to push for further liberalisation when the review processes come round.