I move:
That Dáil Éireann formally expresses its support for the objectives of European integration in the economic, social and political spheres.
The reason for this debate—and I am very sorry, indeed, if there was any error and the Opposition were not informed of this—is that we are approaching a summit meeting in the Community at which matters both of concrete policy, important economic issues and also institutional developments are to be discussed and it seemed an appropriate moment at which to have a discussion in which the House would have a chance to give its views on how it saw the future evolution of Europe so that the Government would have the advantage of those views in approaching this particular occasion. The European movement at international level made the concrete suggestion that such debates should take place in the parliaments of member countries at this time and that reinforced our own feeling that it would be useful to have such discussions.
I would hope that the discussion would, and I would try to give a lead in this, be concerned with the broader aspects of European unity and development towards it rather than with the matters that we tend very frequently and very properly to deal with, that is, the ways in which the membership of the Community may benefit us or at times disadvantage us and the steps we need to take to ensure the best results for our country. It is right and proper that those matters should occupy us. It is natural that Ministers attending meetings of the Council of Ministers of the Community should be concerned to ensure that Irish interests are protected within the overall process of evolution towards European unity. It is right that the Opposition should be vigilant in ensuring that Ministers are doing their job in that respect and, naturally, as concrete issues come up for discussion and as decisions are taken, the question of their impact on this country has to be discussed and considered and, indeed, in advance of decisions being taken it is right that there should be discussion how best our interests can be served. However, in all this discussion of our vital interests and how they can be protected there is a danger that the broader vision will be lost and that the broader interests of this country and of Europe and of this country as part of Europe will not secure the attention they deserve. At a moment when we are approaching a summit which could prove to be of some importance and which, as I said in Brussels the day before yesterday, is I think now guaranteed against total failure in any event, it is right that the Dáil should have the chance to have a general discussion of this kind, right that the Government should indicate the lines of their thinking not merely on the matters of vital national interest but also on their broader approach to the future of Europe and right that the Opposition should have an opportunity to give their views so that the country may hear a constructive debate of this kind. That is the purpose of this debate, that is the intention of it, and my intention in opening it is to give a lead along those lines.
Of course, we have to be concerned about our particular national interest, and the way in which the Community has evolved has been beneficial to us. It has also involved some difficulties for us. It is, perhaps, natural that the difficulties should be highlighted rather than the benefits, but overall, the effect of membership has, if assessed objectively, been greater than was expected, that is to say, that given the international context that we are operating in, the difference to us in this country between being members and not being members is greater than we expected it to be. It is also different in that the context is not quite what we expected it to be.
The world economic situation has evolved differently and much more unfavourably than anybody had anticipated. However, if one considers what our position would be if we were not members of the Community and the position we are in as members, one will see the difference between these two situations is very great, and the benefits to us through being members as against not being members is enormous. These benefits accrue in practical ways through the working of the common agricultural policy, through the working of the social policy, through the very extensive relief of the Exchequer in terms of the inflow of funds from the EEC. But that is only part of the benefits of membership, and I do not propose to dwell on them today because it would divert the debate into the wrong channel. We should be looking at it also in a broader sense.
In a broader sense the benefits for us—when one gets away from the immediate, crude economic benefits measured in millions and tens of millions of pounds—are now being seen very clearly as we develop our membership of the Community. The benefits include the new relationship with the United Kingdom made possible in this multilateral context. The effect of this has been considerable in terms of the reduction in our economic dependence on Britain expressed not merely through the share of exports and imports going to Britain—which fell sharply last year and have risen again slightly this year, but which overall have dropped sharply—but in the way in which our political and economic relationship with Britain can evolve in a situation where we are no longer in a bilateral relationship, which was a totally unequal one, one in which any agreement to be signed with Britain was bound to be more to Britain's advantage than ours, even if skilfully negotiated.
Deputies will recall the free trade area agreement of ten years ago. That agreement was a useful preparation for membership of the EEC and as such the Opposition at the time accepted it, even though it was an unequal agreement in its terms. I remember myself assessing, as an economist, the inequality of it, and the conclusion I came to, which was not challenged at any point but which, in fact, in a number of important respects was confirmed by a much more profound economic analysis than I could undertake some years later, was that the benefits to Britain were approximately three times the benefits to this country. In making that point at the time, I was not attacking the Government of the day for failure to achieve a better agreement. It might have been a somewhat better agreement in some minor respects, but given the relationship with Britain it could not have been anything but an unequal agreement because the relationship was so unequal.
The effect on our relationship with Britain of being part of a wider Community has been profound, not just economically but politically and psychologically. It is exemplified in an interesting way at present where the so-called British renegotiation as it has developed looks like reaching its conclusion under the Irish Presidency. There is a certain irony in the situation that under this Presidency, with Ireland in the Chair at the meetings of the Councils of Ministers, the question of the modifications that can be made in existing policy with a view to meeting British political susceptibilities will be discussed.
The fact that that is happening and the fact that in this situation the mutual dependence of Ireland and Britain and the other members is such that each country is dependent on the goodwill of the others, creates a new relationship between ourselves and our neighbours. For the first time in our history Britain needs us as we need Britain, and that makes possible a much healthier relationship whose psychological effects may in time be very considerable.
We must, however, look beyond this context, too, not merely beyond the question of the crude balance sheet of gains and losses, beneficial though that is in terms which probably involve, relative to our size, greater benefits to this country than to any other members of the Community. We must look beyond all that and the question of its impact on our relationship with Britain, to see the whole European issue in its broader context. The basic reason for the movement towards European integration has been that the key decisions which affect the lives of the people of these countries are no longer taken at the level of national Governments. Not merely our Government but the Governments of great countries like France, Germany and Britain are no longer free to decide for themselves on crucial matters that affect the lives of their people. They are too small for these decisions. It is no longer possible for many key industries to exist purely on a national basis. It is only if they can serve a much wider, integrated market that they can survive in competition with equivalent industries in other even greater countries, the super powers, for example.
The only way for these larger countries, and a fortiori the only way for us, to control our future is to widen the area of decision-making so that it is big enough for really important decisions, and then to take these decisions in common. Otherwise, we and the other countries involved lose all control over our own environment. We are at the mercy of outside forces, external inflation, the power of multi-national companies, international cartels, at the mercy of competitive deflation by which one country can bankrupt another in trying to protect itself, and then before long bankrupt itself also, as happened so tragically in the late twenties and early thirties.
We, above all, as one of the smallest countries in the Community, are most vulnerable and most require the protection we get from working with others in these matters. Our small size means that we are much more dependent on imports and have to export a higher proportion of what we produce, and, therefore, the relationship in trade with other countries is more important to us than to our neighbours. Our small market means, too, that industries here have not the possibility of developing on a large scale unless they can secure access to wider markets. Our situation as an agricultural country has meant also, as we have seen for 50 years of political independence, that we can be left in a position of economic dependence and economic weakness because of discrimination in agricultural markets, a problem that can only be resolved in a much wider context when we and those people who provide the markets for our products are jointly members of a Community in which that kind of discrimination is made legally impossible.
To work, this Community system requires a sense of mutual interdependence and mutual loyalty transcending the more extreme expressions of narrow national interest. It means that the sense of belonging together must be strong enough to ensure that each country's real difficulties will be considered by the other countries. This plant of mutual interdependance and mutual loyalty is a small one and one which at times seems to wilt, and naturally enough it is the moments when countries conflict with each other, the moments when they press their own interests apparently almost to the brink and when there is tension and drama, that hit the headlines of the Press in the Community countries and, indeed, outside it. The moments when, on the other hand, they hold back from pressing their interests, when they give consideration to others and when they work together in solidarity, are less dramatic, less headline-making, and the impression that our people and the other peoples in the Community can gain from the work of the Community in the Council of Ministers can, therefore, be a highly unbalanced one. It is only in working within the Community that one discovers how this sense of solidarity works, how when a country has a real problem, whether it be economic or social or even political—such as the political problems posed by the United Kingdom by the question of continued membership at this time—and when then it approaches its partners on a problem of this kind that one can see operating the system of mutual loyalty and mutual interdependence in making each country, faced with these problems, act differently from the way in which its immediate short-term national interest would suggest it should act.
In the brief period we have been in the community, there certainly have been a number of occasions when countries have come to their fellows with problems. They may have been problems in agriculture, such as Britain has had and Ireland has had. There are problems also of political sensitivity in some aspects of the Community's work, such as in Denmark, where the Government has a tiny proportion—not much more than 10 per cent—of the seats in Parliament and faces an 88 per cent non-government force on the other side of the House. There are also the problems of renegotiation and, when these things come up, one sees at work a process which is new in international relations, but it is not dramatic and, even as this process is working, there is a moment of tension and conflict as countries probe each other's needs and, as the country which is seeking some concession to meet its particular problem is put under pressure, and rightly so, by its partners to make sure that it really needs whatever it is seeking, how much it needs it and how best it can be met without disturbing the interests of others.
It is in the tension that arises as these probing movements are made that the drama is; that is where the headlines are. But, at the end of that process, in no instance in the period in which we have been members and, to my knowledge, in no instance in the period before we became members, has a country ever been refused a concession it needed. It may not always get precisely the type of concession it sought. We were taught in our youth that we may pray to the Lord for the particular gift we seek, but one does not always get what one thinks one needs but may get, perhaps, a better one. I am not sure whether what one gets from the Community is always better for one. It is not always precisely the kind of concession one seeks, but it is a concession designed to meet the real need and, at the same time, not disturb Community relationships, the Community pattern and the Community system.
The fact that this is at work all the time and rarely secures much publicity means that our people are deprived to a degree of an understanding of what the Community is about and how it works. It seems to me that at this moment, as we approach this Summit, where certain important decisions are to be taken, it is right that we should have a debate which will alert people to this aspect of the Community, a debate which will not dwell so much on the particular things we want, should get, have got and have not got out of membership of the Community, but on its real basis of common solidarity and how this actually operates, how we can strengthen the Community so that it operates more freely and more effectively in the future. That would seem to me to be a useful matter for this House to discuss at this stage. We have now got enough experience to know and get the feel of how the Community works intellectually, not always perfectly, indeed, rarely if ever perfectly, but works in this way to some degree. As members, we can usually realistically see how, in fact, it operates and therefore this is a good moment to consider this aspect.
We have seen in relation to farm policy that the British Government have faced certain difficulties and so have we here. At times, in solving the British difficulty, a potential further difficulty is created for Ireland. In each instance in which this has happened the Community has, in fact, been willing to make some additional concession to Ireland and at times to pay towards an Irish schemes, which is available only for Ireland, in order to compensate Ireland for any damage that may be done to it by making a necessary concession to Britain. At times, we have got concessions on our own account and not merely because of problems relating to Britain.
In the last few days we have seen the Community operating also in regard to its regional policy. It is clear in regard to the regional policy that the regional fund is something that in the strictest financial sense can only cost most members money to the benefit of a small number of members who will be net beneficiaries. If the question of a regional fund were to be determined solely on the short-term financial interests of member states it would be voted down probably by seven to two. This has not happened. Certainly the fund has been slow to evolve. Certainly there has been great difficulty in finding a solution to it, not so much—in fact, not at all—because of the reluctance of member states to assist countries really needing assistance; at no point has that been the real obstacle. The obstacle has been that countries and regions not in greatest need, such as the region of Northern Italy, have for reasons of their own, which one can understand because politics play their part in all these matters, sought also to benefit from the fund. It is this that has created the conflict. The British Government have felt it necessary to say that they should benefit substantially from this fund. The French Government have felt that, if Britain were to benefit, then so should France. It is not seen that there is such a clearly distinct difference between Britain and France in this matter. The German Government have had some qualms about transferring funds to their two leading competitors, France and Britain.
The difficulty which has arisen in regional policy has not been one of unwillingness to create a fund to help the regions really in need, but has been rather a political difficulty arising out of the triangular relationship between the three major countries in the Community. That is the problem that existed and it is the problem the Commission has had to overcome. It has now been overcome and overcome on a broad basis; that is to say, it has been overcome on a basis that there will be a fund of a larger type formed by the Commission into which Germany will pay substantial sums, some of which will be going to their competitors, and the German Government are now in the position they took up last Monday when they indicated that they are willing to proceed along these lines. From the German point of view, the argument is not in their national interest. They are willing to pay and the payments out will be going to countries which they do not regard as in real need, countries which may be competitors of theirs, and yet, recognising the need for community solidarity, recognising, on the one hand, the British political need and French sensitivity to Britain's benefiting from something from which France does not benefit, and recognising the urgency of getting the fund under way for the benefit of the countries in real need, the German Government are willing to make that move towards something from which they gain no immediate short-term advantage except the advantage that accrues to all when an action by one country, or a number of countries, strengthens the Community, makes it more vital, makes it more vigorous and more successful.
There, too, as in the case of farm policy, a process is operating which is not simply one of short-term national interest. It is characteristic of the Community and this is true also, for example, in regard to Italy. Italy, in grave economic difficulties, secured a short-term loan from her partners, when that was necessary, and then that was converted by the agreement of most partners into a medium-term loan to see her through the difficulties, an action not to the immediate benefit of those who provided the money but which they saw as in their longer term benefit because it would strengthen the Community, maintain its solidarity and prevent it suffering as it would suffer, of course, if one member got into very bad economic health.
In all this we are building on a narrow foundation. We are making a unique attempt to create really a multi-national federation in which each country will maintain its own cultural and national identity, to which each of these countries in Europe is fiercely attached, will share in the common decisions and key issues, some of them highly sensitive. There is no precedent for this. Other federations that have existed have been on the whole mono-cultural rather than multi-cultural.
This means that we are building something for which there is no precedent. If you look at the other federations which have come into being, the German Federation, the United States, Canada—admittedly bilingual, there is a problem there but it is certainly not multi-lingual in the way Europe is or Australia—you will see that these have been set up on the basis of a single culture, or movement towards a single culture, which is so strongly indicated in the case of the United States.
On the other hand, we are trying to create something completely new. There is no good in pretending that it is easy, or simple, or that the precedents that exist of these mono-cultural federations have much relevance. One of our problems has been that we have all tended to make a mistake because we all love looking to precedents—it is not just civil servants who look for precedents; we all tend in any situation to think by analogy and to look back and see what others have done before and, in so doing, we are in this instance making potentially a serious mistake.
When we look towards a country like the United States and say: "They have a big single market. This works for them. Let us create something similar in Europe", we can be very naïve about that approach. In fact, it is possible to create, to a very high degree, a single market in Europe for the benefit of industry and, therefore, for the benefit of all who work in industry and, therefore, for the benefit of the whole Community, but it cannot be a single market of the American type. There has been a certain naïvety about this in the past, a tendency to think that you can create in Europe the kind of single market which exists in America and perhaps even to go beyond it.
It is interesting that one of the aims that existed until very recently in the Community has been to have a single indirect tax system, a single system of tax on expenditure with the objective of eliminating barriers at borders. The United States have not got that. In the United States there are of course no customs between the states but there are different taxes on goods in different states. It is against the law, and a criminal offence, to bring goods from one state to another without paying the differential in taxation.
In Europe there has been a rather naïve idea that we could eliminate all the differences in taxes and get rid not merely of customs posts but of all barriers to movement of trade and that we would move towards a happy situation in which the same taxes would be payable everywhere. This is part of the mistake of thinking in terms of analogies with other situations which are not relevant and perhaps even not thinking very accurately about what these analogies are. From our point of view it is important that this should be looked at much more realistically.
The fact is that within this Community the cultural and social differences between member states are vast. There are climatic differences, differences in national character, differences in national attitudes. The result is that in fact in matters of common taxation the idea of a common tax system, in my personal view, is not feasible at all. The fact is that the response of people in Ireland and France, for example, to a given level of taxation on drink is quite different because of different national characteristics, because of different climatic conditions possibly. The way in which people respond to a given level of prices for drink is quite different. This is true of other commodities too.
Each country has its own pattern of consumption. If you tried to make it uniform and have it the same everywhere you could have a disastrous situation in which taxation on wine in France was raised to a level which would certainly cause a revolution there, or taxation on spirits in Ireland had to be lowered to a level which would cause a considerable amount of alcoholism in this country. One has to face these realities. It is quite naïve to think in terms of a Community in which you will have a total harmonisation of everything. This lesson is being learned. We are learning as we go along in creating this Community.
The present Commission have moved away from this passion for harmonisation of every detail which in previous Commissions was a serious mistake, and have abandoned much of the harmonisation programme in areas where harmonisation was not necessary for trade and where it was inappropriate to the extreme diversity of the Community. In this area we had to learn as we went along that the rather naïve prescriptions of earlier idealists are not realistic and that in creating a Community of the kind we are trying to create, it should be one in which the key decisions must be taken in common because they cannot be taken by any one state but in which nonetheless there will be great diversity, more diversity, perhaps, than was envisaged by the founders of the Community, who did not think this thing through.
The same is true with regard to the economic and monetary union. Many of the earlier ideas on economic and monetary union were expressed in naïve terms. They seemed to presume that each country could control its own inflation and, therefore, the Community could jointly control the inflation of member countries, that they could all be got to inflate at the same rate, that currency parities could easily be maintained. The fact that for ten years currency parities within the Community were maintained at the same level by an accident of economic history led to the curious delusion that the fact of fixed parity for ten years was in some way due to the existence of the Community. It was not in fact and, as we have learned since, the fact is that the currencies of member countries can and do move and have moved in very diverse directions in response to very different economic patterns in member countries. Unless these economic patterns are co-ordinated at a very fundamental level this will continue to happen.
Government cannot simply prescribe that there will be a standard rate of inflation. No Government have been able to control inflation within their own country. Therefore, the possibility of a collective control of inflation is minimal. On one of the first occasions on which I had to speak at the Council of Ministers, I made that point. I am interested to see, 18 months later, that this is now becoming very generally recognised. If you are to think in terms of moving towards a genuine economic and monetary union, you need much closer patterns in terms of rates of inflation. This would imply much closer co-ordination of wage negotiations so that wage negotiations in the countries where wages go up more slowly would be in some way co-ordinated with those in other countries where they rise more rapidly. This could mean a great extension of international trade union action. It is only by tackling problems at that fundamental level that one will resolve that problem. Here again there is a naïve tendency to look to analogies in other mono-cultural federations and to think that they are relevant to our purposes.
The form of European integration and its pace in different areas of policy is now and will be different from what has been expected. Our economic and financial contribution to the Community must inevitably be small. We are and will be for a long time to come net beneficiaries with significant net payments made to us. Our contribution to the Community cannot be economic or financial. The one contribution we can make, perhaps, to the Community is by being, as a smaller country, more sensitive to other people's feelings, to the divergencies and differences which exist between other countries, less blinkered by absorbtion with our own domestic problems, less fettered by national interests because, the smaller the country, the smaller the number of national interests it has to protect, and perhaps more imaginative. As we find our feet in the Community, it will be my hope that we can make such a contribution, a contribution of imagination, a contribution to the evolution of the Community which will be realistic as much of the thinking in the past has not been, which will be sensitive to the real problems which exist, and which will be constructive. In our Presidency, which starts next January, it will be our aim to make such a contribution in what must be a small way.
It is only natural and proper that we should take pride in the fact that we will hold the Presidency of the Community. It is right that we should do as we have been doing, that is, to make great efforts to prepare for this, to make sure that we undertake this task effectively and well and gain credit for this country. It is right that we should try to ensure that we make a real contribution to the development of the Community in our period in the Presidency. Of course we must not over estimate what can be done. In so far as we can make a contribution to the thinking about the evolution of the Community, this is something which does not cost us any money, and it can be and already is to some degree appreciated by the other member states.
What then are the issues about which we will have to be thinking? What are the issues which already are looming up in relation to the summit which takes place in Paris next week? There is the issue of economic integration itself. This has made great strides although, as I said, taking a somewhat different form and pattern from what was originally sought. If there is to be a movement towards greater economic integration, if there is to be a closer harmonisation of economic and financial policies—and this becomes vitally necessary now as Europe, like the rest of the world, faces a world economic crisis—then in this country and in Italy which are in the early stages of development, our ability to accept the additional economic disciplines needed in the interests of all depends on our being able to get additional assistance through, for example, the regional fund. The link between the regional fund and movement towards the Economic and Monetary Union is widely recognised.
There is a need now for co-ordination of economic policies on a much closer basis than hitherto. This is difficult. If we do not do it, if the Community countries faced with the stresses of the external economic crisis, continue to pursue, as they have done even in the past year, divergent economic policies and if their policies drift further apart, and if some can proceed at a faster pace than others, then the solidarity of the Community, its unity, which is of vital importance to us as one of the smaller economic and weaker members, could be threatened. Therefore, we have an interest more than most in securing a co-ordination of economic policies. At the same time, as a country in the early stage of economic development, as a country which faces considerable economic difficulties, as one within which, because of its openness to the world economy its rate of inflation is higher than other member countries, we could not accept a rigid structure of economic co-ordination which took inadequate account of the divergencies of member states. We must look for a flexible system of economic co-ordination which will take account of certain problems in other countries. That, indeed, is the approach we will be making to this problem at the Paris Summit.
I am glad to say that in respect of this aspect of preparations for the Summit, serious progress has been made. At the early stage of preparation, the emphasis in the documentation was quite deflationary in character, disturbingly so. Pressures from our Government and others have secured a very considerable switch in the emphasis. Now the whole pattern is concentrated more on the maintenance of employment and not so much on the question of taking direct action to restrain inflation, even if this means adversely affecting employment.
The kind of approach which the nine are moving towards in the Summit is a much healthier one and much more suitable from our point of view than seemed likely a month ago. In this area there has been a convergence of views. Instead of a conflict between countries which have different economic situations, there has been a growing recognition of the fact that account must be taken of these differences and that there must be a flexible approach. This approach must place a very high priority on the preservation of employment. We are not the only Government who feel that. Other Governments have expressed this view, including Britain whose economic situation in terms of employment is also very difficult.
The Summit may have a measure of success here, although it must distinguish between the question of the internal convergence of economic policies and the problem of the external position which the Community takes in regard to proposals to sort out the world's economic crises, in terms of energy policy, and recycling of petro-dollars. In those areas there is not, perhaps, as yet the same degree of co-ordination of convergence of views as there is in regard to internal economic problems. If we are to work towards a closer convergence of economic policies of member countries, this will be the only way to keep the Community together in the face of this crisis. This means that we and others will have to accept this discipline. It means also that we, in formulating our economic and budgetary policies, must have regard to the overall target of the Community. There cannot be a situation where each country pays lip service to the importance of having convergent policies and yet pursues its own policies, regardless of the interests of all. This aspect of economic policy-making is new to us and we must take it into account.
At the Summit there will also be the problem of trying to secure agreement on energy policy and on the policy for the recycling of petro-dollars, which means so much to world economy. On energy policy, we must face the fact that there is an unfortunate split among the nine. At the Washington Conference last February, France did not find it possible to join in the efforts which successfully culminated in the establishment of an energy agency. At that conference, Ireland did her best to prevent that split occurring. We were more active than anybody else on that occasion in trying to prevent it but it was beyond anything we or anyone else could do. The situation was too difficult for any effort at conciliation. The problem now is to rebuild the unity within the Community in terms of energy policy which ceased to exist at that time. I hope the Summit will take some constructive steps in that direction.
On the question of the recycling of petro-dollars, for a small country like Ireland whose role in world economic policy in a matter of this kind must be quite negligible, it is extremely disturbing to find that the great powers who have it in their control to adopt a common policy and who could between them face up to this issue, have failed to do so. We are now 14 months into the period of the world economic crisis created by the sharp increase in oil prices. There is as yet no agreement even among the European countries, never mind among the world powers in general, as to the best way to tackle this problem. This is not merely disturbing but highly dangerous. Our ability to influence this position is very small indeed. Within the Community, so far as we can try to help our partners come closer together to decide on a common European policy which could then be put forward as the basis of a common world policy, we shall do what we can.
All these issues will feature at the Summit. In the preparation for the Summit Ireland has fought the regional policy issue to the point where we are assured now that this Summit will lead to the establishment of a regional policy as the Copenhagen Summit did not. We have pressed hard and successfully with others who agreed with us against unduly deflationary economic policies. We have worked to reconcile differences between other member states on energy policy and on the recycling of petro-dollars.
There is another aspect of this Summit. There is another dossier— the word used to describe the large amount of documentation—that of the institutional dossier on political integration. Political integration, or political union as it is called at times, has two different aspects in the Community. On the one hand, there is the question of strengthening the democratic institutions of the Community and, on the other, the problem of Community countries working towards co-ordination of foreign policy and, ultimately, towards a common foreign policy. These must clearly be distinguished although they both come under the general heading of political union.
So far as the former is concerned, that is, the democratisation of the institutions of the Community, it is clear that this concerns above all the European Parliament. That Parliament is the key to a democratic Europe. At the moment it is a weak institution struggling not always successfully or, perhaps, even skilfully, to increase its powers and functions. It is not directly elected. Its members are chosen by the Parliaments of member countries. In practice, this means that they are chosen by the political parties in power. This indirect method of choice of members does not give the Parliament the sense of directly representing the people of Europe so that they can claim the rights they should have to control democratically the decisions of the European Executive, whether one describes the Council of Ministers by that term or the European Commission.
The European Parliament have not the powers they should have and do not claim these powers because they do not have the sense of having the right to them which they would have only through direct elections. On the other hand, enthusiasm for direct elections to the European Parliament is somewhat united when the parliament is so powerless that, perhaps, in its present form, the peoples of the community might not feel much enthusiasm by going to vote in such elections, just as we had the problem in the Presidential election 18 months ago. In that election there was a low poll because people did not feel that the presidency had power of a kind that made it appropriate for a national election and one in which people would want to participate on a large scale.
It is possible that direct elections to a European Parliament without power could also fail to evoke sufficiently widespread interest. The question of direct elections, and the power of the European Parliament, are questions which are inter-related. It is a hen-egg problem which can only be solved by tackling the hen and the egg simultaneously. We have pressed for progress on these issues. Already the parliament has this year been conceded some significant budgetary powers including a power, which this Parliament has not got, to increase the expenditure proposed. This is something which our parliamentary system cannot operate. That power has now been given in a certain form to the European Parliament. When the budget is presented to that parliament they can propose increases in certain parts of the budget. Although the Council of Ministers originally reacted to this by saying that they would agree to it only on condition that these increases would require a qualified majority in the Council to endorse them, at our meeting in the last couple of days this has been changed so that now a simple majority in the Council of Ministers will be sufficient to endorse parliament's claim for more resources.
The Council of Ministers, acting in accordance with normal procedures, may propose a budget which does not involve as much expenditure as we, and others, may think there should be on social policy and it may not be possible to obtain the necessary qualified majority to increase the allocation. When the matter goes before parliament, parliament can now vote that more money be provided and then, by a simple majority, the Council of Ministers can accept that. This means that countries who were reluctant to vote the money at the outset and were able to prevent it through the use of qualified majority will be frustrated from being able to maintain that position when it goes back to the Council after decision by parliament. That is a very significant power and it is a power which our own parliament, and the British and French parliaments, do not possess.
There is progress towards giving some greater powers to the European Parliament but the parliament still has no power of legislation. The parliament can advise and recommend but these recommendations can be put in the waste paper basket; they do not have to be accepted. A parliament which has no power to legislate, which has not even a power of co-decision to join in the decisions of the executive and to endorse or reject them, is a very weak parliament. Until the European Parliament gets that kind of power, and is directly elected, the European system we are building up will not be a sufficiently democratic one.
We would like to see legislative power given to the European Parliament and to see it directly elected. On the question of direct elections, I should like to say something more in detail because this could raise some problems. Our view is that we should move towards a completely directly elected parliament gradually; that the parliament when it is directly elected, or partially directly elected, should have representation of member countries in the same ratio as at present. We accept the fact that the present representation in the European Parliament is strongly biased in favour of the smaller countries. In our case we have a representation which is five times as great as our population would warrant. Of course, the slogan, "one man, one vote", is one which we know of and endorse, in principle. If we are reluctant to move away from the present system it is because we are talking, not of a nation State, but of a federation. In the federations we know of an analogy can fairly be made, if we look at their political structure. Their political structure is one in which there are two Houses. There is an Upper House with very important powers which can safeguard the interests of the member states and in which, for example in the United States, they are equally represented; Rhode Island having the same number of members as California. In the Lower House, the House of Representatives, representation is something approximating towards one man, one vote, a system of universal suffrage which, broadly speaking, is on a population basis.
We accept that that is the aim towards which we should be moving in Europe. We are willing to move towards that aim fairly rapidly. What we are not prepared to do is to concede that our present representation, which is five times as great as our population would warrant, should be diluted until and unless we do have an Upper House with equal representation in which the interests of the particular nation, small in our case, can be protected. We would like to see a three stage operation. We would like to see a movement, as soon as possible, not in 1980 as has been proposed hitherto, not just before 1980 which are the words currently being used, but as soon as possible, perhaps in 1977, towards direct election for the greater part of the membership of the European Parliament.
We feel that the present system under which the parliaments of member countries are represented in the European Parliament is useful—it is inadequate certainly—because in the crucial period of development of the European Parliament it maintains a link between national parliaments and the European Parliament. What is intolerable in the present situation for those on whom we have imposed the burden of representing us there is that they should have to be members of the national parliament, of the European Parliament and undertake the whole burden of committee work of the European Parliament which can mean 20 or 30 meetings a year over and above the plenary sessions. I do not know when I have travelled on a plane between Ireland and Brussels or Luxembourg and not found Members of our parliament travelling backwards and forward; coming home for a day and returning for a committee meeting. This is impossible.
What we need is a system which does not prematurely destroy the useful link between the national parliament and the European Parliament— that can be maintained—but which does mean that the bulk of the European Parliament—I would have thought two thirds—should be directly elected and the burden of committee work could be concentrated on these people who will not have the additional burden of being members of the Dáil or Seanad. The members of the Dáil or Seanad who are members of the European Parliament would then undertake the possible task of attending 11 plenary sessions each year and not have to undertake the impossible task of attending to all the committee work as well. That kind of mixed system for a development period would maintain this useful link between the national and the European Parliament and would relieve the intolerable burden on existing members of the European Parliament who are members of national parliaments, would give an overwhelmingly democratic representation, would give the European Parliament, two thirds of whose members would be directly elected, the right to speak for the people of Europe against the executive bodies in the community and to hold their own against them.
At a further stage one could envisage a movement to a bicameral system in which there would be an Upper House with each State equally represented and a Lower House in which we would then accept that representation should be proportionate to population. It is through that kind of process that we on the Government side would see the matter evolving. I am not being dogmatic about it; it is not a matter on which the Government have taken a firm decision but I am speaking of the kind of evolution which seems to us to be the appropriate one. We would welcome the views of Members in Opposition as to whether they think along these lines or whether they would wish to put forward varied proposals. On this Parliament should try to find a concensus. It is not an area in which there has to be great party division. It would be more effective if we could find a concensus as to how we think the European Parliament should develop. Our minds are reasonably open on this. I am merely putting forward what seems to me prima facia to be a useful approach but I would be willing to consider any proposals the Opposition might have on this point.
Another point I should like to raise, and on this I believe there is a divergence of view, and quite a healthy one, between Government and Opposition, is the question of veto in the Council of Ministers. I am quite clear that on matters of national interest the veto has to be maintained. Other countries are not willing to give it up. At this stage of the development of the Community—when it is still embryonic, has not reached a point of maturity, and when so many new policies have to be developed and evolved—the protection of the veto is, of course, of importance. There are two things to be said on this. First, that the veto is frequently abused by all member countries. Instead of being confined to cases where there is a real national interest, it is used to protect minor commercial interests and it is used only because, once it is there, every Government is vulnerable to any small interest group saying: "We need your support to protect us. There is £100,000 involved here and you must protect our interest. You can do so and, if you refuse to do so when you can do so, then we will not forget it to you". That means that you get a Europe of interest groups. They are often very self-interested interest groups and not at all disinterested interest groups.
The existence of the veto and its abuse in this way is self-prepetuating and is damaging to the general interest. If we can do anything to restrain ourselves in this way, by some common convention, I think we should do so. This is a matter which is coming up for discussion at the Summit. Whether any very concrete proposal will emerge other than a pious resolution to be better boys in future, I do not know. I would hope so but I would not be confident. I would have thought it could be useful if member Governments agreed, for example, that if they were going to use the veto they would have to notify this in advance at a meeting and go back and get at least a Government decision from their own Government formally to that effect, perhaps even a decision of their own Parliament. I would minimise the abuse of the veto in minor issues. We would be prepared to consider something along those lines which would still leave it, of course, as a protection of vital national interests.
Looking ahead beyond that to the longer term, while I accept that the veto is there and must remain for the time being to protect vital national interests, I do think it important that our people should understand that that veto, in practice—because we are a small country—is much more frequently used against us than by us to protect our interests. In recent times there was the situation where proposals to increase expenditure under various headings—regional policy, until the day before yesterday, expenditure on the social fund, expenditure on the European Development Fund—for the associates overseas were held up because one or two countries were unwilling to provide the additional money needed. It is in fact other people's right of veto which has prevented a regional fund coming into effect until now. Other countries, which are bigger, more important, which have more interests to protect, use the veto much more widely, because they have so many more issues to protect; which do not have to worry so much about hurting other people's feelings by using the veto too much as we have to worry, because, if a small country abuses this power, it will very soon find that its interests will not be looked after quite as enthusiastically in the future as in the past. One has to use judgment here; it is not an absolute power to be abused on every occasion. The veto system favours the larger country, which is less inhibited in using it; which does not have to worry about losing friends by so doing; which has far more interests to protect by using the veto far more often, whereas the smaller country can use it very occasionally only on particular issues and sometimes finds itself using it in order to protect itself against the veto of the larger country. In a sense, this is what we have been doing recently.
We made it clear that we would, in a sense—though it is not a strict use of the veto—veto the Summit conference because we would, with the Italians, not attend and, therefore, we could not take our place at the Summit of the nine. We made it clear that we would do that unless the veto that had been used on the regional fund by other countries was lifted. This is perhaps the first and only time that we have really effectively on a major issue threatened a veto and the only reason we had to do it was that somebody else had used the veto already. A veto which, in practice, is really only used in those circumstances is not a particularly useful one. It is arguable that, over the first two years of our membership, if nobody had a veto, this country would be much better off than all having a veto, including ourselves.
I think that point should be considered. I am not pressing the point at the moment. I think it would be premature to change the system of vetoes in case of national interest now. But I was convinced, before we became a member, from what I knew of the system, and I am thoroughly convinced now through seeing it working in practice, that in the longer run the veto system is the protection for the great powers and the qualified majority voting system provides the protection for the interests of smaller countries and is one which would be much more suitable for our purposes in the long run. I put that to the Opposition who, I think, have a somewhat different view here, as something that they should seriously consider. It is not, at present, an issue between us. But I would hope that if and when the Community evolves to the point where it has reached the stage of maturity and near completion of its development process, when it would be possible to consider—and for the larger countries to consider— dropping the veto, the Opposition would, in its experience of the working of the system then, come round to the view that it might be perhaps more in our interest not to have a veto at that point. I think it worth raising that issue at this stage for discussion.
Finally, I want to come to the question of political co-operation and the co-ordination of foreign policy. This is not strictly part of the Community system but is an addition to it, carried on in the margin of Community activities, if you like. It started on a small scale and only in the past 18 months or so has it developed considerably. In a sense, we have been in on the ground floor of that development. It is a very interesting development; it is intangible and hard to come to grips with. Its achievements are not at this stage great. Its failures are evident and significant. Nonetheless it is not to be under-estimated. The fact that these nine countries do now seek to co-ordinate their foreign policies, do seek to have common positions on foreign policy issues, is an important development. It carries with it great potential for the future, also, of course, some difficulties and, indeed, dangers. The fact is that these nine countries are enormously different in their social and cultural outlook, in their historical traditions, in the way they see the world outside. Some of them have very strong reason—for example because of their historical experience— to support the Jewish position in relation to Israel, because they had the direct experience of seeing the appalling way in which the Jewish race was treated in Europe during the war. For that most honourable of reasons they are very concerned indeed that nothing would be done that would prejudice the State of Israel or its security. Indeed, that concern is widely shared by all member countries but it is particularly acutely felt by some because of their historical experience. Other countries which have not that direct experience —in which the treatment of the Jewish race in Europe during the war did not make the same emotional impact—look at the problem somewhat differently and their perspective of the Middle East situation diverges from that of the other group. Here one has an example of where the different historical experiences create a somewhat different outlook. This means that, when a vote comes up at the United Nations on a given issue—because these resolutions are always extremely mixed; in fact, in the current year, nearly all the resolutions coming forward are so mixed that they contain both features that one favours in principle and language which one cannot accept in practice—one is faced with the constant dilemma as to whether one should vote for the resolution, with an explanation about the things one does not like, or abstain explaining one cannot vote for because of the language or, because the language is so extreme, vote against the resolution. One has a constant problem in that respect. In a way I have found this to be the most difficult single task and the one in respect of which I am least satisfied with my own performance, because it is so difficult to feel in the end, when one has taken a decision, that it is necessarily the right one.
Of course, this faces all member countries. The attempt to co-ordinate foreign policy attitudes on such things as United Nations resolutions on sensitive matters such as the Middle East, Cambodia, Rhodesia or South Africa, is an attempt which does not always succeed. But there is an honest effort made to secure consensus. This has meant that countries have moved away from more extreme positions and, in particular, countries which took more—I do not know if right wing are the right words but I shall use them for want of others—right wing positions, because of their historical traditions, have been brought along to a more liberal consensus through this process. At times this means that a country which would have a more liberal outlook in seeking to get a consensus has itself, perhaps, to abstain rather than vote for something in order to encourage and persuade other countries not to vote against. Therefore, this process of co-ordination is one which involves concessions on both sides, concessions which I must say at times it is very hard to decide whether one should or should not support. Nonetheless, this process is at work in which attitudes are coming closer together on foreign policy issues. On the whole, it is beneficial and on the whole, in my view, the movement is towards more constructive foreign policy attitudes rather than the other direction although on individual issues one can question the individual decision taken and some of the decisions we have had to take have been difficult ones.
Another feature of this process of political co-operation has been the operation of the new crisis management procedure which was tested in the case of Cyprus. I cannot say, when one looks at the condition of Cyprus today, that we were brilliantly successful in the results we achieved. Nonetheless, the Community managed to take up a concerted position, to act speedily and to put pressure on the two parties which in some respects and at a certain moment helped to produce certain constructive results although on the overall outcome the situation is now a very bad one and we have not yet succeeded in putting it right.
This whole process of crisis management operating in the capital of the presidency as through the foreign ministry of that country and the ambassadors accredited to it, co-operating with their Governments, is a useful one and tested in the case of Cyprus showed it had merit and can be developed. Let me say, in the presence of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, that its effective operation depends on very speedy communications and problems can at times arise in this respect which are not confined to this country. We have to be sure we can communicate effectively and rapidly. A view exists in the country which holds the presidency that one of the biggest problems they had in that Cyprus situation was that of communication, not solely with this country although there were problems with this country, but with all the member countries. This is one of the difficulties of acting speedily and quickly in the matter.
