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Why the Irish were right to say No Samuel Brittan Financial Times 20/06/08 If you are looking for examples of nonsense on stilts you could hardly find a better instance than the reactions of the European political establishment to the Irish No vote in the referendum on the Lisbon treaty. To begin with, it is not "a defeat for Europe". It is not even a defeat for the European Union. It is a defeat for a certain vision of the EU. First and foremost there is the goal of shifting more and more decisions to the EU level. This started after the second world war as a noble effort to end all possibility of war between Germany and France. It was twinned with the creation of a large area of liberal trade, in a world still full of restrictions. As the original goals have been lost in the mists of time, the aim of "more Europe" has been pursued by the leading group of politicians and bureaucrats for its own sake, even to extending to the Brussels level decisions that are left to the state level in the US. There was something to be said for bringing together all the many European treaties into a single document. For example, Frank Vibert of the European Policy Forum has made several attempts to construct such a constitution on a limited government model. But the framers of the ill-fated constitutional treaty were determined to extend the EU competence. When France and the Netherlands threw this out in their referendums the eurocrats came up with the Lisbon treaty. Valérie Giscard d'Estaing, who presided over the original convention, declared that it amounted to the same thing. The main difference is that instead of a single comprehensive document the Lisbon treaty consists of a series of amendments to existing treaties. An excellent 354-page compilation has been produced by the British Management Data Foundation, "The Treaty of Lisbon in Perspective", which prints the main existing treaties together with the Lisbon treaty. The work is strictly impartial and the authors' misgivings are confined to two pages entitled "British Business Concerns". There is everything to be said for ending the ridiculous six-monthly rotation of the EU presidency. But two other provisions should be stressed. The first is the notorious passerelle clause, which provides for unanimous agreement to extend majority voting to new areas. But once that happens can individual governments ever reclaim jurisdiction? These are among the many matters left open for decision by the federalist-inclined European Court of Justice. The BMDF publication recalls Sir John Major's boast when he was British prime minister that the subsidiarity provisions of Maastricht would enable perhaps 25 per cent of EU regulations to be repatriated to member states. Not one has been. Another little-noticed change is that the so-called Charter of Fundamental Rights which, unlike the much earlier pre-EU European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights, enshrines collective bargaining and union privileges, is to have the same legal value as the treaties. The UK and Poland have a protocol stating that no extension of EU competence over national labour law is intended But how safe is this exemption? This brings me to the second eurocrat ambition: to entrench the so-called "European social model". One aspect of this is that economic policy should more and more reflect the outcome of negotiations between employer and union bodies, preferably at the EU level. If you do not believe me you should look at a study by Deutsche Bank Research of EU labour market policy (May 21 2008). The authors are concerned to shift policy in a more market-friendly direction but have no doubt that this will have to be done in the framework of the "social partnership". The old-fashioned name for this process is corporatism, which is often confused with democracy. When, a few years ago, I asked at a Commission-sponsored meeting in Brussels whether we could have the EU without the social partners, I was assailed for being anti-democratic and never invited to these meetings again. There are dangers in policies determined by producer bodies selected neither by the market nor by a recognised political process. They tend to squeeze out the individual citizen, such as the unemployed worker priced out of a job or the unorthodox craftsman without credentials who could find work in a freer labour market. There are countries such as Austria that, for a time at least, had more success with this model than the UK had with its attempts in the 1970s. These are matters best decided at national level. The best case that the supporters of Lisbon can make is that this latest treaty is a fairly minor step compared with previous agreements. But if I were in charge of language tuition in Brussels, I should require all beginners there to find idiomatic translations into all the 23 official languages for the English saying: "It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back." If some European countries such as Germany and France and a few others want to develop the centralist and corporatist model further, I do not see the objection. Indeed we are likely to see not a two-speed but a multi-speed Europe, even though the British Foreign Office will worry that the UK might not be absolutely sure of a seat at an imaginary top table. Too bad.
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