UK tanks are parking themselves firmly on the European Union’s lawn – thinktanks, that is. From IPPR’s new report Staying In: A reform plan for Britain and Europe, to the Centre for Policy Studies’ The UK and the EU: Cutting the knot, each anticipates a point in the near future when, euro-crisis resolved, the weight of public opinion and baying Conservative backbenchers will bring Britain’s relationship with Brussels to a head. There are institutional reasons for this prediction too. IPPR report author Will Straw cites the coalition’s European Union Act 2011, whose ‘referendum lock’ will trigger a plebiscite on changes to European governance made by treaty, while former Tory MP David Heathcoat-Amory’s CPS study cites European Commission president José Manuel Barroso’s commitment to present plans for the future shape of the union ahead of European parliamentary elections in 2014.
So should we be in, out, or shaking the relationship about? The CPS battery of proposals is less than clear-cut on this question, and, indeed, between the two reports, IPPR wins hands-down for clarity of vision. Heathcoat-Amory’s thesis is that the UK should fight for the right to opt in to, rather than out of, virtually every aspect of EU policy. Securing a settlement characterised by such a case-by-case approach would be dependent, he says, on the will of Britain’s leaders to fight for it. On the big question of the single market, he proposes that this should remain the sole ‘no opt-out’ area of competence, but with some related opt-ins still existing, such as in the financial services sector. How these can truly be reconciled is not explored, and it has to be said that the prospect of a future British prime minister occupied day in, day out with hand-to-hand euro-combat on most things under the sun sounds barely practicable.
What binds the two papers is the old adage that there is an opportunity in every crisis, and the recognition that, one way or another, the union will emerge in a different form to that which it held going into the storm. Where they diverge is in IPPR’s call for a straight in-out question. Currents in Conservative thinking (and, increasingly, in Labour too) talk of some other option that could be put to the electorate – the mysterious ‘radically different relationship’ which the CPS propounds. But IPPR is right to argue that ‘anything short of an in-out question will fail to satisfy a large section of political opinion and the public that they have been given a genuine say’. Moreover, Straw’s reform agenda has some attractive elements: the appointment of a commissioner for growth, and selection of a candidate to become president of both the commission and council made by parliamentary groupings. The upshot is that the building blocks of a union more visibly responding to citizens’ priorities and wishes are there for the taking.
Sticking with matters European, the director of the Centre for European Reform, Charles Grant, recently made it into the top 40 – that is, EurActiv.com’s hit parade of those Britons most influential on EU policy. Close behind him was Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, which recently suggested to Europeans that the re-election of Barack Obama provided not simply the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief, but signalled that it is ‘time to grow up’. ECFR argues that, not only will the United States continue its ‘pivot’ towards Asia, a combination of cost-cutting and continued redeployment of security efforts away from the Old World means Europe will be increasingly expected to look after its own affairs – including those troubles brewing in its back yard. With the EU the only actor in place to claim to speak for most of the continent but still sorting itself out internally, taking on large foreign policy challenges may continue to proceed in a piecemeal, intergovernmental way, at least for the time being. Incidentally, number one in the top 40 is Liberal Democrat MEP Sharon Bowles. One can only speculate how much better things might be were the British prime minister engaged enough to merit the top spot.
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