The EU model has 'run out of time'
by Lee Rotherham
25 June 2012
The imperatives that drove countries to join the EU, in many cases, no longer stand despite federalist forces pushing for more integration - argues campaign group
Of all the friends and allies of European integration, the greatest has been time. The founding fathers counted on it, when they set up a tariff union in the post-war world. It was time that saw out Charles de Gaulle. It was time that has seen countless binned schemes re-emerge in classic civil servant style as soon as new ministers arrive. Time saw out the British opt-out on the social chapter. Time nearly saw the United Kingdom's opt-out on the single currency go too. Time outlives the veto.
Patience for the European federalist is more than a virtue, it is a job requirement. Two current European Union stories flag this up. The UK government has announced it intends to revisit the format of the British driving licence, so that as well as the EU flag - a UK symbol appears prominently as well. The minister responsible is the excellent Mike Penning. But it might fascinate readers to learn that Penning and I were responsible for flagging up the issue to an outraged national media when it first emerged. Then, both of us were working in the UK parliament for backbenchers. That was in 1996. It has taken 16 years for a flag to get on a piece of plastic. And that's in an area that's basically under domestic control.
No wonder the going rate for changing the size of a piece of mesh under the Common Fisheries Policy is 10 years and that it has taken decades to even get the European Commission to acknowledge that throwing dead fish back - rather than landing them - is a moral outrage. It will still take aeons and kalpa for anyone to do anything serious about it. It is said of General Franco that his desk had two in-trays - problems that time has solved and problems that time will solve. I fear the officials dealing with the CFP have such a desk. The problem will disappear with the fish.
For his part, and the second story, the UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband - of the opposition - has come out with what passes for an apology on getting Eastern expansion policy wrong. Again, I can remember being pulled into Conservative Central Office a good eight or so years ago to help prep frontbenchers for the debate. The Labour government was blindly adamant that there was no need to do what many other EU governments were doing and make use of a derogation to phase in when nationals from these countries would have access to the UK's labour market. It was a limited power, since it could only run for three years, after which of course our old friend time would kick in and do its magic once more. But it would have allowed the government an opportunity to recognise that major shifts in employment patterns were coming and significant changes to our social security, welfare, and even housing systems, might be worth making. Short-sighted Whitehall decided against this, and the result is an apology today. That apology is for a planning error a decade ago. Repent, it seems, is also done at leisure.
This is where my new book comes in. The EU in a Nutshell explores the workings of the European institutions, everything from the quangos to the Directorates General, via the lobby groups to the more exotic offices. It lifts out the interesting statistics, from allowances to wine lakes; these days more Windermere than Niagara. The text explores everything from the number of international organisations in which the EU now has a corporate membership in its own right – 37 - to the number of volumes held at the Central Library - some 528,000. There are quirks such as the fact that the group photo for the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has the team all crowded on a stairwell; and that MEPs under their health insurance plan are expressly forbidden from buying spectacles with non-corrective lenses in them - and pretending to be Clark Kent. The EU is an entity that's been growing, evolving and legislating for a large amount of time.
But we are three generations from the war, famine and destruction that drove the founding six to set up the European Economic Community. We are also two generations from the economic decline and red flag militancy that pushed Britain in. And we are already a generation from the rusting away of the Iron Curtain. If time has been the friend of the scheme of slow federation, it has also seen the world change. The imperatives that drove countries to join, in many cases, no longer stand. At a time of eurozone crisis, forces are pushing for more integration. But it is a direction that made sense in its historical context, not today. We need to understand that the EU itself model has run out of time.
Dr Lee Rotherham has been an adviser to three British shadow foreign secretaries and is the author of the TaxPayers' Alliance book The EU in a Nutshell
Of all the friends and allies of European integration, the greatest has been time. The founding fathers counted on it, when they set up a tariff union in the post-war world. It was time that saw out Charles de Gaulle. It was time that has seen countless binned schemes re-emerge in classic civil servant style as soon as new ministers arrive. Time saw out the British opt-out on the social chapter. Time nearly saw the United Kingdom's opt-out on the single currency go too. Time outlives the veto.
Patience for the European federalist is more than a virtue, it is a job requirement. Two current European Union stories flag this up. The UK government has announced it intends to revisit the format of the British driving licence, so that as well as the EU flag - a UK symbol appears prominently as well. The minister responsible is the excellent Mike Penning. But it might fascinate readers to learn that Penning and I were responsible for flagging up the issue to an outraged national media when it first emerged. Then, both of us were working in the UK parliament for backbenchers. That was in 1996. It has taken 16 years for a flag to get on a piece of plastic. And that's in an area that's basically under domestic control.
No wonder the going rate for changing the size of a piece of mesh under the Common Fisheries Policy is 10 years and that it has taken decades to even get the European Commission to acknowledge that throwing dead fish back - rather than landing them - is a moral outrage. It will still take aeons and kalpa for anyone to do anything serious about it. It is said of General Franco that his desk had two in-trays - problems that time has solved and problems that time will solve. I fear the officials dealing with the CFP have such a desk. The problem will disappear with the fish.
For his part, and the second story, the UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband - of the opposition - has come out with what passes for an apology on getting Eastern expansion policy wrong. Again, I can remember being pulled into Conservative Central Office a good eight or so years ago to help prep frontbenchers for the debate. The Labour government was blindly adamant that there was no need to do what many other EU governments were doing and make use of a derogation to phase in when nationals from these countries would have access to the UK's labour market. It was a limited power, since it could only run for three years, after which of course our old friend time would kick in and do its magic once more. But it would have allowed the government an opportunity to recognise that major shifts in employment patterns were coming and significant changes to our social security, welfare, and even housing systems, might be worth making. Short-sighted Whitehall decided against this, and the result is an apology today. That apology is for a planning error a decade ago. Repent, it seems, is also done at leisure.
This is where my new book comes in. The EU in a Nutshell explores the workings of the European institutions, everything from the quangos to the Directorates General, via the lobby groups to the more exotic offices. It lifts out the interesting statistics, from allowances to wine lakes; these days more Windermere than Niagara. The text explores everything from the number of international organisations in which the EU now has a corporate membership in its own right – 37 - to the number of volumes held at the Central Library - some 528,000. There are quirks such as the fact that the group photo for the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has the team all crowded on a stairwell; and that MEPs under their health insurance plan are expressly forbidden from buying spectacles with non-corrective lenses in them - and pretending to be Clark Kent. The EU is an entity that's been growing, evolving and legislating for a large amount of time.
But we are three generations from the war, famine and destruction that drove the founding six to set up the European Economic Community. We are also two generations from the economic decline and red flag militancy that pushed Britain in. And we are already a generation from the rusting away of the Iron Curtain. If time has been the friend of the scheme of slow federation, it has also seen the world change. The imperatives that drove countries to join, in many cases, no longer stand. At a time of eurozone crisis, forces are pushing for more integration. But it is a direction that made sense in its historical context, not today. We need to understand that the EU itself model has run out of time.
Dr Lee Rotherham has been an adviser to three British shadow foreign secretaries and is the author of the TaxPayers' Alliance book The EU in a Nutshell
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COMMENTS
Is the Taxpayers' Alliance attemtpting to further the corporate interests it allegedly represents? Some would say that anything it says or publishes cannot be seen as anything other than propaganda.
Alexander - UK
