European Council

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which goes to the point made by the former Europe Minister, the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), which is that we must do better at trying to re-order the priorities of the European budget, but I do not accept that we can do that only by allowing an increase. I accept that we are taking a tough position, because we are trying to get a freeze with major partners for 2014 to 2020, but we also want budget reform and reform of the CAP. We are in the vanguard of arguing for that because we want to see the money better spent. It is right to set out down this path and try to achieve those goals.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister will recall that six months ago he and other EU leaders set out the Europe 2020 strategy as a successor to the Lisbon agenda, which was agreed in 2000. Is he confident that nothing discussed at the weekend will affect the benchmarks that were set in June? With the European Union, what is important is not just getting an agreement, but making sure that countries meet benchmarks on jobs and growth.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point, which is that we should not amend those benchmarks, but the Europe 2020 document is slightly disappointing, because Europe’s real problem is that it has become uncompetitive, has expensive welfare systems and overbearing pension systems and is not complete as a single market. We need a more robust conversation in Europe about how we get growth—how we reform and improve the structure of our economies to get growth. Europe 2020 is only part of that, and we should be more ambitious for next year.