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The entry of 10 new members and the failure to agree a constitution have concentrated minds on the future of the EU. Two contributions from either side of the UK political fence have analysed the country's fractious European history and sought to find the way to future harmony.
TWO BRITISH POLITICAL HEAVYWEIGHTS HAVE recently mounted the platform at universities to give extended speeches in which they took a wider view of EU matters than their daily duties usually allow. ETUC General Secretary John Monks gave us 'Thoughts on Europe's future' for the Jean Monnet lecture at the University of Manchester while EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten was speaking in Cambridge on 'The existential question - Will Britain ever "actually" join the EU ?'. While both dealt with concrete matters they also delved more deeply into the psychology of the UK which has kept EU affairs at arm's length. Monks traced the phenomenon back to the nineteen-forties when Monnet first proposed a union of European states. The British government's first instinct was to stop it happening by making sure that it had no independence from its Member States. This worked with two international bodies (OECD and WEU) but when Monnet and Robert Schuman came to found the Coal and Steel community they were wise enough to keep it a secret from the British. When they found out the UK government merely took the view, in a paper written by Denis Healey, that it wouldn't work and, if it did, Britain could always join later. According to John Monks this set a pattern for future EU-UK dealings from John Major's 'wait and see' to Gordon Brown's 'prepare and decide'. 'There is this deep continuity in British policy towards Europe characterised by hostility, scepticism and suspicion'.
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John Monks and Chris Patten at the rostrum |
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How does the psychology affect the practical policy issues today ? For General Secretary Monks, in a globalised economy the EU is a bastion against American-style capitalism. The single market was developed along with health and safety requirements, the social chapter has been the source of 'of new labour standards in Europe with new laws on ... maternity leave, pro rata protection for part-time and fixed term contract workers, working time regulation ...and...a minimum of four weeks holidays'. Yet the UK government, having reversed the Conservative opt-out has become steadily more anti-regulation, helping to block four new directives which would give workers more rights. It 'tends to regard all these as unnecessary and harmful, and that regulation in these areas might curb enterprise and cause unemployment'. Patten points to the failure to join the Euro-zone, the disregard of the achievements that Britain has made in the EU and the inability to see that other countries share some UK goals as evidence of 'Euro-psychosis'.
Both speakers made attempts to sketch out a way forward that would lead to greater harmony. Patten recommends that 'we strip away some of the falsehoods that definitions of nationhood everywhere require. We should see ourselves as we really are. That way we have the chance to be more than we will otherwise become'. For Monks the development of countries such as Brazil, India and China will make Britain's 'small thoughts from a small island' irrelevant in 10 years time unless we stop 'harping on about our uniqueness [and] plunge with enthusiasm into a close alliance with our neighbours to forge a unit big enough to maintain influence in the rapidly changing world'.
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'Thoughts on Europe's future' is available at : |
http://www.etuc.org/en/index.cfm?target=/EN/Speeches/ |
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The existential question - 'Will Britain ever "actually" join the EU ? ' can be found at:: |
http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/ |
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