Tory leader tells students that 'the real pro-Europeans oppose further union'
WILLIAM HAGUE said yesterday that he feared the European Union was "in danger of living in the past rather than facing up to the future".
He told students that the EU was "in danger of accepting without debate a political destination agreed 40 years ago; in danger of proceeding with political integration not because it is right but because it is said to be inevitable".
Speaking at the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France, the Tory party leader said: "There are European politicians who believe that the EU should continue down the path to closer integration. They believe there should be a common European foreign and defence policy.
"They believe that there should be a common EU criminal justice and immigration policy. They want tax and spending powers taken out of the hands of national exchequers and given to Brussels. And many of them believe our ultimate objective should be the creation of a single European state, and that this is an inevitable destiny. I believe they are wrong. There is a limit to European political integration. We are near that limit now."
He said the single European currency "will create as many problems as it solves".
"The most important is the danger that the single currency will lead to an increasingly centralised Europe. I believe Europe should not press on towards an unacceptable degree of political union just to make the single currency succeed.
"The real pro-Europeans, the people who want to see a peaceful prosperous co-operating Europe, are the opponents of further political union and the supporters of a confident outward-looking Europe of nation states.
"Our generation should always be grateful to the generation of Europeans and Americans who rebuilt Europe. But the time has come to ask whether a 50-year-old solution devised to heal a war-torn continent should dictate what happens in Europe over the next 50 years.
"Old economic solutions are not right for new economic circumstances. European businesses will find it increasingly difficult to compete if they remain over-burdened with social costs and inflexible employment laws. The EU should also recognise the case for lower taxes.
"The founding fathers of the EU wanted to eliminate what they saw as the root cause of war itself - nationalism. They wanted to replace the nation state as the prime source of loyalty with loyalty to a European ideal.
"For those who had lived under Nazi tyranny, nationalism became understandably tainted by fascism, collaboration and war. Britain's experience had been quite different.
"It was our national identity, powerfully expressed in Winston Churchill's speeches, which helped see us through the darkest days of the war. For us patriotism was the focus of our resistance against Nazi tyranny.
"As we enter the new century the original danger which confronted the founding fathers has gone. If anything the threat comes from the opposite, the artificial repression of nationality.
"A nation is a group of people who feel enough in common with one another to accept government from each other's hands. France is a nation. So is Britain. Europe is not. For democracy to function properly, people must feel their vote counts, that they can influence the decisions that affect them.
"There is a marked absence of democratic accountability in almost all that the EU does. Unelected officials and judges wield enormous power.
"Push political union beyond its limits and you jeopardise the very peace, stability and prosperity which Europe's post-war statesmen were so anxious to secure. My fear is that a single currency will take European political union well beyond its acceptable limits. The single currency is irreversible. Under a single currency the one-size, fit-all interest rate may affect different countries differently, but if it does the voters cannot change the policy. Indeed the government cannot change the policy."
Quoting Hans Tietmeyer, president of the German Bundesbank, Mr Hague said a single currency "will lead to member states transferring their sovereignty over financial and wages policy".
He added: "In order to make the single currency work I fear the EU will be forced to intrude more and more into the spending and taxation decisions of individual states.
"Some will say this speech is too late, that European political integration is inevitable and that Britain must jump on board or miss the boat. I say none of these things is inevitable if Europe's political leaders speak out now."
