Europe

There is much excitement in Westminster at the moment about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s campaign to end ‘discards’ under the Common Fisheries Policy. DEFRA and non-governmental organisations estimate that perhaps as much as 60 per cent of a catch will be returned dead to the sea because the CFP’s controversial quota system is based on the amount of fish caught. DEFRA has been pressing the European Commission to reform the quota system for years. At last, they seem to have succeeded. The commission is due to announce in July that the quota system will now be based on the amount of fish landed in port. With that apparently comes a concession to reduce discards significantly.

It's Europe Day today, where the flag of the EU will be flown by 26 of its 27 member states. David Cameron is refusing to join in* — and rightly. Why celebrate an institution to which the British public is hostile? I've always found it strange that Euroscepticism is caricatured as a fringe, minority position when the polling evidence is so overwhelming. The European Commission anxiously monitors this, conducting identical polling in all member states — the largest poll in the world. The results are never publicised in Britain because they make clear the depth of public hostility. We have dug a few out, from the Eurobarometer data archives, and print them below.

The news that the European Union has decreed that its Budget be increased by 4.9 percent in 2012 ties a knot in the stomach, as I ponder an Easter weekend spent in Margate rather than Majorca due to austerity. As Tim Montgomerie notes, the government is taking this opportunity to assert its euroscepticism. Stern communiqués are being worded; stark warnings are being issued. Behind the scenes, the government has joined with the Dutch, its closest ally on the Continent, to confront the avaricious Commission. Patrick Wintour reports that the French will also oppose the proposed Budget, and the Austrians, Danes, Swedes, Finns and Belgians are expected to lend their weight to the cause.

Vince, it seems, is Vince. But Britain is not alone in struggling to arrest immigration. A mass of displaced North Africans is descending on Malta and Italy. The United Nations estimate that more than 20,000 people have already landed this year and many more expected. Neither Malta nor Italy can cope alone. On Monday, Malta called for the EU to invoke a 2001 directive that grants migrants temporary protection in cases of ‘mass influx’. Italy also petitioned Brussels to spread the physical burden. The EU did not acquiesce in either case, which especially outraged the Italian government: both Berlusconi and immigration minister Maroni said that the European Union stands and falls together, and they threatened to withdraw.

Prisoner voting is back on the agenda. The European Court of Human Rights has rejected the British government’s appeal and declared that the coalition has six months to draw up proposals to change the law.   David Cameron now has to decide whether to ignore the Strasbourg Court or go against the will of his MPs, who voted overwhelmingly to oppose giving prisoners the vote in response to the court’s initial decision. In many ways, ignoring the court is the safer option. Tory MPs aren’t inclined to back down on this issue and if Cameron tried to make them he would create a lot of ill-will and take an awful kicking from the press.

13 years ago, The Spectator carried an interview with Nigel Lawson in which he gave his views on the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union – views that seem especially prophetic today. ‘It’s going to be very nasty’, Christopher Fildes, The Spectator 2 May 1998 The Nigel Lawson Diet now seems to suit its inventor. Gone are the days when I had to defend him as chancellor against his girthist critics. Then he fell out with Margaret Thatcher – at first, over Europe. He wanted to put the pound into the exchange rate mechanism: she would not hear of it. Now I catch up with him at the House of Lords, in one of its fine rooms that the Lord Chancellor has not yet collared, looking out across the river. Europe is still on our minds.

Tucked away in an old building, where few people knows of its existence, lives one of the most important parliamentary creatures - the House of Lords European Union Committee. Often ignored because it applies analysis to a debate where loudness is the main currency, it has produced a new report on the Single Market. The government would do well to read it. For pushing the Single Market should be what animates the Europe Directorate in the Foreign Office. The Single Market is the main reason for British membership of the EU and the committee implies that successive governments, including the Cameron administration, have dropped the ball in this area. As their report puts it, the UK should 'return to its position of strongly championing the Single Market.