EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report)

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not a member of the European Union Committee but I am delighted to speak in this debate. I congratulate the committee, and the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, on producing, as ever, a balanced and clear introduction to the debate. The committee’s report covers a wide range of issues and is already having an impact, as we see from the responses from both the Government and the head of the European External Action Service.

I want to expand on some of the issues covered in the report and perhaps touch on one or two that are not there. Later this month, I will vote to remain in the European Union, primarily because I believe that it is a force for good in the world, and potentially can be an even more powerful one. I believe very strongly in the soft power of the European Union. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, made a number of very valid points analysing the nature of power and the way it can be used. I do not believe that the European Union is there to exert military power; that is a role for other international organisations. Given our history, economic strength and our adherence, largely, to the democratic rule of law and human rights, the European Union exerts soft power in the world today which is strong and can ensure change elsewhere and within our own borders. Therefore, I believe very strongly that the aim of the European Union’s foreign and security policy should be visionary. It should be about creating a cleaner, more peaceful and more equal world. That should be the stated aim of this policy, not something cobbled together by a cosy consensus that is meek or weak and does not provide leadership to the peoples of Europe when they look around the world. This new foreign and security policy for the European Union should be ambitious and visionary. It should be about the rest of the 21st century, not these years right now.

The European Union is a force for good that can help tackle security threats such as nuclear, cyber and violent extremism by intervening throughout the world to prevent conflict, not just by responding militarily. The European Union can challenge climate change and produce a cleaner environment for future generations through introducing international rules and ensuring adherence to them. It can help to tackle inequality throughout the world—not just economic inequality but inequality of rights. In helping to tackle instability and our historic shame that we are partly responsible for inequality throughout the world, the European Union can be a force for good.

In an interdependent world we look to the European Union for solidarity on these issues, for a voice elsewhere in the world and for action throughout the world focused mostly on the immediate neighbourhood, as the committee rightly recommends, but perhaps also including sub-Saharan Africa, an area where we have particular responsibilities. We look to that voice to ensure the adoption and implementation of sustainable development goals—not just the adoption of strong climate change agreements but their implementation too, and not just action on conflict today but long-term action to prevent conflict and extremism in the future, using our soft power to shape the world, not just to react to world events.

I shall comment briefly on four issues that may be slightly underplayed in the committee’s report. The first is development. We cannot divorce diplomacy and defence—the elements on which the report focuses—from development. Diplomacy, defence and development have to go hand in hand. Therefore, the European Union taking a lead on spending 0.7% of GNI on development aid is as important as its taking a lead on spending 2% on defence, which is highlighted in the report. Both should have been highlighted. Our European history gives us a duty to maintain a long-term commitment to development in countries where we were partly responsible for the exploitation that led to their conditions in the first place. Because of our democratic institutions and elements such as the independent rule of law, the European Union can play a real role internationally, particularly in our immediate neighbourhood and in sub-Saharan Africa, in capacity building, institution building and economic development.

Secondly, there is a role for the European Union in encouraging the capacity of other continents and regions to build institutions that help them act in solidarity, in their own neighbourhood and internationally. The European Union’s relationship with the African Union should be much stronger. It is already viewed as strong, but the long-term strategy for the European Union should surely be to help build an African Union which can take the kind of action we ourselves take in supporting African states in their capacity building and conflict prevention. An EU/AU long-term vision would send a very strong signal that we see aid as a short-term investment and capacity building as the long-term investment in people helping themselves. Elsewhere in the world, in ASEAN, in south-east Asia and elsewhere, people look to the European Union as a model. They look to our regional solidarity as a way of working together. The EU has a role to play in encouraging that.

Thirdly, the vision for enlargement has gone way off the tracks. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was clear where the next steps were going to be and how important enlargement was—not for the European Union as an institution, a building, an organisation or a group of people, but for the continent. I was in Poland in 2000, speaking as External Affairs Minister for the then new Scottish Government, to a class of 16 and 17 year-olds. They had a light and a sparkle in their eyes at the prospect of joining the European Union. When they spoke to me, they viewed it as re-joining the mainstream of Europe. That light is not there in too many countries on the border of the European Union today. The European Union should have a much clearer long-term aim on enlargement that sets out the steps we want to take and our priorities.

Finally, there is an issue with the missions. It is not referred to often enough that the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, has done a remarkable and significant job in bringing together the European Union missions at country level around the world. As we know only too well, it is sometimes a difficult task to get diplomats, development workers and others to work together in this country, even when they have the best of intentions. However, in many cases, the European Union missions throughout the world are not yet coherently linked up with the individual embassies of the European Union member states. There is still a job to be done in clarifying the role of the EU missions in individual countries and how they complement and work with the embassies of the individual member states.

In this Chamber, we talk a lot about public disillusion with the European Union and its institutions. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, has already talked about the rise of nationalism and anti-European feeling. If the European Union took a global lead with a vision such as this for foreign and security policy, people would believe in the institution more. It is not just about the nuts and bolts of their everyday lives: if they feel as if the institution is doing something to help create a better world, that will help in a small way to reduce the anti-European feeling which is developing in far too many places.