Intergovernmental Conference (Hansard, 27 October 1995)

§ Mr. David Davis

The eighth and ninth meetings of the study group took place on 25 to 26 September in Brussels and on 3 October in Luxembourg. I attended both meetings as the Foreign Secretary's representative, though I was delayed by other Government business on 25 September and was represented for part of the meeting by the head of European union department, Internal.

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The 25 to 26 Septenber meeting covered topics 4 and 5 of the interim report, which deal with European citizenship and justice and home affairs.

On citizenship, we repeated our concerns that the concept was associated in the public mind with statehood, and therefore created anxiety about the long-term evolution of the EU. Such concerns, and those related to potential duties of citizenship, did not emerge clearly enough from the chairman's interim report. We also warned against the temptation to develop citizens' rights and non-discrimination clauses in the EU treaty in a way that duplicated rights already protected in national law. We maintained our opposition to EC accession to the European convention on human rights and to the suggestion of a bill of rights in the EU treaty.

The study group has not yet received the study which it commissioned from the Council secretariat into how the treaty might be simplified without altering its substance. The representatives from the European Parliament, however, circulated a study which the Parliament had commissioned separately, copies of which have been placed in the Library of the House.

On justice and home affairs questions, I said that the interim report was unbalanced in its failure to acknowledge what had been achieved so far, in a very short time, in the third pillar. Britain was determined to improve the operation of the pillar, but did not believe that this would be achieved by compromising its essentially intergovernmental character.

The 3 October meeting was concerned with the common foreign and security policy and with defence questions.

There was some discussion of creating a CFSP Secretary-General to give impetus to the preparation and implementation of policy and to help with the growing external representational burden. I said that it was essential that any such figure was the servant of the presidency and of member states. I agreed, however, that CFSP needed a strengthened capacity for policy formulation and planning.

On decision-making, I continued to insist on the retention of consensus in CFSP as the basic rule. Unanimous decisions gave strength to the EU, as they engaged all member states. If the CFSP ceased to be a common policy and became a majority one, it would be less effective. Would dissenters be free to pursue an independent policy? How could they be prevented from doing so?

On defence questions, I said that the interim report was confused, and needed to be substantially revised. NATO was the essential basis of Europe's defence, and strengthening of the Western European Union/NATO relationship should be the first priority. The WEU/EU relationship was a subsidiary question. An essential element of the British approach was that the WEU should not be made subordinate to the EU, not least because not all member states were bound by article 5 of the WEU treaty.

It would be wrong for the latter to be involved in decision-making on the so-called Petersberg tasks—peacekeeping, humanitarian missions and crisis management. Some of these would carry a risk of 872W escalation in which the absence of guarantees of mutual assistance between participating states would be a severe disadvantage. In addition only those bound by WEU's article V could judge whether secondary tasks could be undertaken without jeopardising their ability to fulfil their mutual defence commitments.