Sovereignty and Democracy in the European Union.

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Sovereignty and Democracy in the European UnionSpeech by The Rt Hon Chris Patten, CHThe Chatham Lecture Trinity College, Oxford, 26 October 2000 - SPEECH/00/402 - Check against delivery Introduction: what is sovereignty? Sovereignty is a notoriously slippery concept. In feudal times, the position was clear enough. Sovereignty rested with God. For Aquinas, in the 13th century, human law was derived by reason or revelation from divine law. Valid law could not be created by an act of will. Later, God was good enough to delegate. Sovereignty resided with the King. James I, in a speech to Parliament in 1610, said that : "The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God's lieutenants… but even by God himself they are called gods." The theory of absolute monarchy never recovered from the blow that struck off Charles I's head. Parliamentary sovereignty was on the rise. The Bill of Rights in 1689 asserted that it was illegal for the king to pretend the "power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws… without consent of Parliament." Parliament alone, then, was sovereign. And that sovereignty was no longer an expression of the will of God, but the will of the people. But what does it mean to say that "Parliament" (or any other group or individual) "is sovereign"? The concept of sovereignty is a difficult one because there is often confusion between sovereignty de jure the supreme legal authority; and sovereignty de facto - the ability to induce men to take a desired course of action. The distinction between the two is well illustrated by the members of the French Convention who on 2 June 1793, in the exercise of their sovereign legislative authority, ordered the arrest of the leaders of the Girondin party but only after their President had led them to one exit after another to escape the armed mob. Another good example occurs in Henry IV Part One: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep" says Glendower. "Aye" replies Hotspur "And so can I. Or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?" I do not want to turn this into an undergraduate essay on political philosophy especially in such company. But these reflections are relevant to the current debate about the future of Europe because there has been a tendency in this country to treat sovereignty as some mystical absolute. A birthright of every Briton handed down through the generations like a sacred flame, indivisible and unalterable. Every question about how best to represent the national interest in the European context can be resolved by applying one simple test: does the proposal require Britain to surrender any more of her birthright? In this conception, the country is giving itself away, piece by piece: "drifting ever closer to its own destruction" (to quote from the Conservative Party's recent production "Believing in Britain"). Yet 'sovereignty' in the sense of unfettered freedom of action, is a nonsense. A man, naked, hungry and alone in the middle of the Sahara desert is free in the sense that no-one can tell him what to do. He is sovereign, then. But he is also doomed. It is often preferable to accept constraints on freedom of action in order to achieve some other benefit. Britain is severely constrained by her membership of NATO. She is committed to intervene in the common defence if another member is attacked, and accepts a foreign (US) commander for such an operation. As Mrs.Thatcher so rightly said at the time of the 1975 Referendum on Europe: "Almost every major nation has been obliged by the pressures of the post-war world to pool significant areas of sovereignty so as to create more effective political units." My own conviction, as I shall argue, is that in our national debate we have focussed too much on sovereignty. The more important concept is that of democracy. Constitutional authority, or de jure sovereignty, may very well be divided between several institutions both within the country and outside it, if the authority thus divided can maximise the common good. So the proper question is not whether participation in the EU is a treasonable abdication of sovereignty, as some opponents have sought to prove in the courts. It is how the emerging polity can best represent, and be felt to represent, the will of the people. Only if people accept the legitimacy of the changing political order will they willingly accept the obligations imposed by it. If they do not feel adequately involved and consulted, they will eventually question their political obligation. That raises the whole question of democratic support and accountability, which is my principal theme today. But before I come to that, let me enlarge a little further on why I feel that the obsession with sovereignty misses the point. Britain's sovereignty in the European Union In the 1950s Britain stood aside as the European Community began to take shape. The reasons for that are legion. I have no doubt, however, that one important strand in British reluctance was the wish to preserve national sovereignty. It was all very well for the rest of Europe to combine forces and to develop supranational institutions indeed it was a good thing. But Britain should remain captain of her soul. Licentious foreigners could engage in increasingly federastic practices. But we should preserve our virginity. Yet by standing back at that time; by seeking to preserve our de jure sovereignty, did we maximise our de facto sovereignty our influence over our own destiny? It is now generally accepted that we did not. By staying out, we allowed the Community to take shape without us, and according to principles that were alien to us. Once it became clear that we had no future as a serious European player outside the political and economic construction that was to dominate the second half of the 20th century, it was too late. We knocked at the door. We were rebuffed by de Gaulle. We had to sue for entry. And we got in on terms that were very much less favourable than what had been on offer more than fifteen years before. The same could be said of the French debate at the time of Maastricht. Opponents demanded "l'indépendence de la politique monétaire" or de jure sovereignty. But the franc fort already belonged to the DM zone. So de facto French sovereignty could be maximised by accepting the single currency. The Bundesbank, quite rightly, takes account only of German interests. But the French have a seat on the European Central Bank, which has to look to their interests too. This, indeed, is the logic of the whole European project. The nations, by sharing de jure sovereignty, gain de facto sovereignty, or influence over their destiny. Opponents of the EU often point to Switzerland or Norway to demonstrate that Britain could be perfectly successful, economically, outside the Union. They are not wholly wrong. Those who argue that we would lose more than 50% of our market, that we risk allowing jingoistic chants to lead us to the romance of the workhouse, exaggerate their case. We would suffer a bit, depending upon the terms we could negotiate for our trade outside the Union. Inward investment would fall. Unemployment might tick up. I have no doubt we would be less well off outside than in. But there would be no catastrophe; no Biblical plagues. The more important point is that far from gaining sovereignty, in the de facto sense, Britain would actually lose it. In international trade we would have to follow WTO rules with little opportunity of shaping them. That would be left to the heavy hitters: the EU and the US. Most of our trade, of course, would still be with countries of the European Union. We would still have to meet Single Market rules (as Switzerland and Norway must). But we would have no say in the shaping of those rules. And when we ran into barriers, for example when we were told that if we wanted to market our milk chocolate within the EU in future we would have to label it 'vegelate' rather than 'chocolate' we would just have to lump it. We would lose our ability to reduce the absurdities of the Common Agricultural Policy (as we have done with remarkable if unrecognised success over the years, gradually eliminating the principle of unlimited support for unwanted production). Above all, in my view,
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we would betray our heritage by abandoning the leadership of Europe to a continental combine. And much the same, I suspect, applies to the Euro. For years the British debate has been about the pros and cons of a single currency. That was, and is, an interesting question. But the debate should always have been about whether Britain was better off inside or outside a project which was going ahead anyway. In little more than a year's time Euro notes and coins will replace national currencies in most Member States of the EU. And already the advent of the Euro ...

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