EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report) — House of Lords, 2016-06-07
Topic: International Affairs
Richard Balfe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I join many speakers in thanking the chairman for his wise chairmanship. He will get two sets of thanks because he will be back with another final report next week. My experience of the chairman goes right back to 1979, when I was part of the group that overturned the European Parliament budget, so ably introduced by the then budget commissioner, Christopher Tugendhat. I also welcome my noble friend Lady Morris, a distinguished contributor to our party’s foreign policy and who I know will be a good successor I want to make a few points of administration first and then a few points about Russia. A number of speakers, including the noble Lord, Lord Desai, mentioned 28 policies. Of course there are not 28 foreign policies, there are three or four foreign policies and then 20 to 24 followers of foreign policies. There are some major actors, but we must realise that most of the countries of the European Union see in the development of a common foreign and security policy an opportunity for them to maximise an influence which for many of them is pitifully small at the moment. It is small because they do not have the resources. They do not have the embassies, the money or the staff We as a big player may be driving policies forward, but for many other countries our influence rests not only on being in the European Union—which seems to be more or less a consensus—but on acting within the European Union in such a way that we become one of the three or four major countries that other nations want to support and move forward with. That can and has been done, and we have been a very successful actor in that. However, it helps to recognise that the work done by Commissioner Mogherini and, before her, Commissioner Ashton has been both distinguished and for our benefit. It is something that we can build on. We can maximise our direction by working strongly within the CFSP strategy My next point picks up on a comment made by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, on the very important issue of staff. The atmosphere that Britain has projected in recent years is not one that has made young and able people want to go and work in the European Union. They look at the hostility to the EU that has come out of this country over the past few years—I will not put a dividing number on it—and say, "No; I might not have a career in a few years’ time". I was talking today to a friend in Brussels who said of some members of the British Labour Party there that, "Quite a few of them are looking to take out Belgian nationality". We have got ourselves into a mess. We have a situation, confirmed this week, whereby the President of the European Parliament is a German, the Secretary-General of the European Parliament is a German and the new Deputy Secretary-General, appointed just this week, is also a German. For the first time in the history of the European Parliament, all three of the top posts are in the hands of one country. I am not saying it is a country that is hostile to us, but I do not think it is good that we have withdrawn to the extent that we have from involvement and from encouraging our brightest and our best The final policy point I want to make is this: I am surprised at the lack of interaction between this Parliament —I include both Houses—and our democratically elected Members of the European Parliament. We send them there; we give them a mandate; our parties put forward manifestos; we knock on doors to get them into the European Parliament; and then we forget them. We have to involve them more. In particular, I mention two names—Charles Tannock from my party and Richard Howitt from the Labour Party—who are widely and deeply respected Members of the European Parliament. They have influence well beyond being "the Brits", but they are seldom seen or counselled. In fact if you want to bring them into the building the first thing you have to do is get them through the door I remember Caroline Jackson, a Conservative Member of the European Parliament, chair of the Environment Committee of the European Parliament and a leading figure in the European Parliament, who said to me, "Well Richard, I have far more rights as Robert Jackson MP’s wife than I do as chairman of the committee in the European Parliament". I just mention that. We have to sort it out I want to say just a few words on Russia. We have somehow to get a dialogue going again. We are in a situation not dissimilar to where we were before Helsinki. Relations are bad, there are many things that we want and many things that the Russians want. One thing we should be looking at is getting them back into some sort of relationship with the Council of Europe. The situation makes no sense. Okay, they have been suspended, but there is no strategy for how they get back, except that we say they have to withdraw from Ukraine. They are not going to do that. We have to work out a strategy for dealing with them Many of the surrounding countries have been mentioned. I shall not go through them all but will mention one or two. The Baltic states are a key point, but they themselves must also realise that a fairer treatment of the Russian minorities is needed. They have to get to a position whereby the Russian minorities in those three Baltic states say, "Aren’t we lucky we live here?", not "Oh God, we can’t vote". I was in Latvia last year and the Russian party in the Latvian Parliament is basically a social democratic party. It is excluded from government by all of the other parties from the far right to the far left. The only thing they have in common is that they are Latvian parties and will not do a deal with the Russians That is not the way to run a democracy. The Baltic states, in return for our support—I believe that we can give them support—must learn to play the proper democratic game of involvement. They have to give their Russian population a reason for wanting to be there. They are now addressing the NATO concerns of 2% defence expenditure. I am afraid that one of the points that comes out of this report is the idiocy of this division that we are somehow a European Sub-Committee but we cannot look at defence. Defence, NATO and the EU are so intertwined that it is very difficult to say, "Well, you can’t look at troop movements but you can look at cybersecurity". So, one of the challenges for our new Madam Chairman will be to work out somehow how we can slightly expand the terms of reference My final comments are on Turkey. The words "strategic disarray" were mentioned, and that is absolutely right. Turkey is in crisis. It has 3 million refugees on its hands and its Government are not sure whether they believe in democracy, to put it bluntly. Or, they are not sure how much they believe in democracy—let us put it that way. It has elections—it has fair elections—but it also has a structure of government that has a very weak opposition where there has effectively been one-party rule for the last 12 years. I have always said that once you are in power for 10 years you go mad. We have plenty of British precedents for that. I hope that we will manage to find an accommodation with Turkey that keeps it onside. I would much rather have our boundaries in Turkey than a bit closer to home. Turkey is another big challenge for us and I hope it is one we can rise to.