European Political Co-operation (Hansard, 12 July 1989)

§ 4. Mr. Ian Taylor
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will report on the outcome of the Ministers European political co-operation meeting of 11 July.

§ Sir Geoffrey Howe
I attended the meeting in Paris. Developments in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe were the main subjects. We discussed Mr. Gorbachev's visits to Paris and Strasbourg. Our agenda also covered the middle east, southern Africa, the Horn of Africa, Cambodia and China. I stressed the importance to Hong Kong of international support. We agreed statements on Cambodia and the conference on security and co-operation in Europe, copies of which have been placed in the Library of the House.

§ Mr. Taylor
Was my right hon. and learned Friend able to discuss with his Community colleagues President Gorbachev's latest plans for the architecture of the common European home? Did they note President Gorbachev's warning that the superior western European economic system should not try to tempt the eastern bloc countries away from their Socialist principles? Does that not mean that the eastern European countries are free to live in their own rooms in the common European home, as long as they employ Soviet interior decorators?

§ Sir Geoffrey Howe
We did not discuss the matter in such meticulous architectural detail as my hon. Friend suggests, but we agreed that Mr. Gorbachev's speech called for no direct response from us. The Twelve will continue to make their best contribution to the development of East-West co-operation by underlining, above all, the attractiveness of the western model. We emphasised the fact that the common European home is based on European Community designs on western European foundations, and we hope that countries in the rest of Europe will be free to follow that example.

§ Mr. Tony Lloyd
In pursuing the idea that Community countries should co-operate over their attitude to China, does the Foreign Secretary believe that his position is somewhat clouded by the fact that the British Government, through the Department of Trade and Industry, are still actively sponsoring trade missions to China? Does that not undermine what he is trying to achieve?

§ Sir Geoffrey Howe
The hon. Gentleman will find that those matters are being considered separately and very carefully, case by case. For example, the proposed Sino-British Trade Council exhibition which was to have taken place in Peking next November has been postponed, and other matters are being treated in a similar way. However, there is no intention—nor should there be—of imposing an economic embargo or economic sanctions on China. None of our European Community partners has adopted that view; nor has the United States or Japan.

§ Sir Peter Hordern
Was my right hon. and learned Friend able to pursue the goal of closer European economic co-operation by reminding the Council of Ministers of the admirable speech of Karl Otto pöhl in Munich on 22 June in which the president of the Bundesbank said that he saw no great purpose in forming either a common European currency or a European central bank? Would it not be better to pursue the policy of the president of the Bundesbank—of a step-by-step development—than to go forward in rash philosophical leaps, which seems to be the metier of Mr. Delors?

§ Sir Geoffrey Howe
I share my hon. Friend's admiration of the speech by Karl Otto Pohl. It was very forcibly drawn to the attention of the European Council at the meeting in Madrid, which was attended by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and myself. It was also no doubt in the minds of the Finance Ministers who met on Monday this week to discuss the matter. It was they who discussed it, not we the Foreign Ministers. However, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer certainly underlined the very important point that has been made by my hon. Friend: that we must address the matter stage by stage, according to the principles that he has outlined.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
In the light of the great concern that is being expressed by the people of Hong Kong about their future and of the fact that in his first reply the Foreign Secretary said that these matters were raised at the meeting, what is the position of the various Foreign Ministers? Is there an understanding that the problem cannot necessarily be resolved within the United Kingdom? Do people accept that there must be some form of international settlement?

§ Sir Geoffrey Howe
The primacy of the United Kingdom's position is accepted on all sides. The Foreign Ministers at their meeting this week recognised—as on previous occasions when they have discussed it—the importance of bringing home to the People's Republic of China our shock at what has happened there. That was why we agreed yesterday that the Community ambassadors in Peking would make specific representations about the need for observers at trials and in relation to imprisonment. We also sustained the decisions already taken in relation to economic, political and military matters and agreed that those principles would be followed.