Andy Burnham doesn’t only want a ‘reset’ of relations with the EU. The Prime Minister has hinted that he is open to calls to rejoin it. Burnham has also told The Rest is Politics podcast that Russia meddled in the referendum vote. But if the PM is suggesting that voters were duped and should have another say on the EU, he would do well to properly consider a couple of recent developments inside the bloc. If he did, our PM might well think again.
One is a European summit planned for this week, ostensibly about streamlining EU administration. Member states are being asked to consider proposals for not only reducing the number of European Commissioners, but also – and very significantly – possibly ditching veto rights on matters such as EU taxation rules and sanctions on third countries.
The EU may talk about preserving democracy, but this appears to be a version of carefully guided democracy EU-style
The other is a troubling interview with the EU’s enlargement commissioner Marta Kos. In a statement that will go down well with Eurocrats in Berlaymont and the EU old guard – Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg – Kos outlined in the Guardian a plan under which any future joining EU member could for fifteen years face massively increased oversight.
If anything its government did was seen as backsliding on the rule of law, the ‘values’ of the bloc, or the principle of sincere co-operation, a four-fifths majority of members might under the proposals vote to cut off funding or even take away its voting rights. In addition, these relatively new members could also be expected to give up any right of veto on future enlargement.
The object is clear. Brussels is eyeing a massive augmentation of its own power at the expense of the present ability of member state governments to put obstacles in its way. The EU also envisages a vast increase in central control of the political process in member states, and wants to make it far more difficult in future for any maverick administration to oppose this. Kos openly admitted to the latter. ‘I don’t want to see new Trojan horses in the European Union,’ she said, adding, as if this was not clear enough, ‘Today I can say, no more Viktor Orbán.’
These are clear warning signs. The EU may talk about preserving democracy, but this appears to be a version of carefully guided democracy EU-style. For all their faults, and despite the fact that the Brussels establishment cordially detested them, the awkward fact is that Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary until 2024, and Mateusz Morawiecki’s PiS in Poland before 2023, had clear majority support in their respective countries.
The problem for Brussels was that there wasn’t much it could do about them, since under the present rules the taking of serious measures against any state requires unanimity of all the others. The new proposed regime aims quite simply to make sure this never happens again.
The next time a state or two fails to toe the line and follow the conveniently vague ideas of the ‘rule of law’ and ‘EU values’, the aim is that swift intervention by most of the rest will ensure that Brussels prevails.
The move towards centralisation of policies on tax and foreign policy in Brussels is also disconcerting. Taxation and foreign relations, especially sanctions, are delicate matters and vital to the idea of a nation state. So is the right to decide which other states to enter into close association with. The prospect of a demand being made that all EU members in the former case, and new ones in the latter, formally give up the ultimate right to say no to proposals from the centre are ultimately inimical to the commonly-touted idea of the EU as a union of sovereign states.
This matters to Britain, and especially to any UK politician who might feel beguiled by calls to return to the EU fold. Put bluntly, the EU isn’t the club we left in 2020. Were we to apply to rejoin it, not only would we face hard bargaining on things like the Euro and the rebate on contributions: it seems a racing certainty that we would be told to accept these most recent changes too. We are known as a country affected with a large dose of Euro-scepticism, and the other EU states will be determined to prevent our making difficulties in future.
If so, presumably Britain would if we rejoined have to accept being, for a long fifteen years, not so much at the centre of Europe as a kind of second-tier EU member, subjected to being forced into taxation we never voted for, association with new entrants we might not like, and to having our constitutional and other arrangements constantly scrutinised to ensure they conform with a vague and possibly changing concept of EU values.
It’s a rough world out there in Europe. If the PM and his fellow-travelling Europhiles think that rejoining would represent a return to the comfortable certainties of the pre-Brexit era, the sooner they – and we – discover the truth, the better.
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