There are few more despised political beasts than the European parliament, whose elections will be held tomorrow. Westminster MPs distrust it and hate its higher pay and perks. However, though it is derided as toothless and extravagant and as a retirement home for greedy grandees, the parliament, nevertheless, matters.
If the European Commission (EC) makes sensitive proposals on tax, social security, policing and new European Union (EU) members, any national minister can wield a veto. Most EU law, however, is now decided by both ministers and MEPs (members of European Parliament). Each minister in the council casts votes depending on their country’s size, but any legislation adopted by this body can then be amended or rejected by a simple majority of MEPs. MEPs now amend most EU legislation and even treaties. Much of this law sets standards so that products can be sold throughout the 28 member states and 508 million people. That is crucial for prosperity. Before the single market, nation states used to set up spurious safety rules to block imports.
EU law is like the secondary legislation that often goes through Britain’s own parliament on the nod, providing that a minister has powers delegated by a full-blown act. It is often mind-bogglingly technical, but it still matters, particularly to consumers, business and the environment. And it still engages fierce arguments about values.
Look at the emissions limits for cars, where parliament pressed for tougher requirements (which were still too easy for carmakers to meet). Or the rules on lightbulbs, which are triggering energy savings and cuts in carbon emissions. Or take the recent U-turn on electronic cigarettes. The EC and every national government wanted to limit the amount of nicotine to a fraction of what a real cigarette delivers. E-cigarettes would have been strangled at birth. The MEPs voted to relax the limits and said any flavour could be added too.
When I was an MEP, there was a row about takeover rules where the British wanted to open up other countries’ firms to bids. It passed the ministers, but was narrowly lost in the parliament. National governments are still allowed to block foreign takeovers. Compare France on GE’s potential takeover of its engineering champion Alstom with our genuflections over Pfizer’s bid for Astra Zeneca.
Then there are treaties: The parliament recently sent the Commission back to amend a fisheries agreement with Morocco. It also told the US where to stick its air passenger data requirements, provoking the commission to negotiate a better deal. The parliament can be often is the tough cop in the talks.
The parliament also holds EU officials to account: Commissioners never want to get on the wrong side of their committee and have to be approved by MEPs before they take office. The same applies to the European Central Bank, which had to concede more openness about its proceedings. In a globalised world, more and more issues have to be dealt with by international institutions because the national writ no longer runs: Criminals skip jurisdiction in the EasyJet age, so you need the European arrest warrant; acid raid falls on us from continental power stations, so you need EU rules to protect Britain; global warming requires low carbon electricity, so we all boost renewables to gain economies of scale. You either have institutions like the EU with an explicit capacity for political decision-taking, or you leave it to the bureaucrats and lawyers. The US has traditionally gone the legal route. For example, the US wants companies to be able to sue governments for restraints to trade under the new Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). That can potentially mean that Britain will no longer be able to block imports of US meat fattened with growth hormones, a provision that the parliament is expected to block.
The precedent is the Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement), which tries to replicate EU-style functions between Canada, Mexico and the US.
The Canadians were forced to repeal an environmental ban on adding MMT to petrol because of a legal judgement under Nafta in favour of the US Ethyl Corporation. Once the Treaty was approved, there was no capacity for political input. Canada had to back down.
The EU and the parliament can be precious and pretentious: However, EU spending is less than 1 per cent of gross domestic product, compared with 48 per cent for the 28 national governments. The EU is an important layer of governance, no more. It is not a state in the making any more than the United Nations, which also has an anthem and a flag.
So why don’t we feel more comfortable with these institutions? Part of the answer is that it is so difficult to roll back EU decisions once they are taken: We should use sunset provisions — with a fixed end date — far more often. But more fundamentally, the EU is also bedevilled by the number of its languages. Incomprehension is bad politics.
India is the world’s greatest multi-lingual democracy, but Indian voters, whether from the Hindi-speaking north or the Dravidian south, inhabit at least 16 separate political spaces. Accountability suffers. Politics is about language; it is about emotion, feeling, passion and sometimes even rational argument.
The European parliament is far from perfect, but it is worth the vote. It is worth sending people to represent one’s values and not some Ukip stooge who will boast about making off with the most expenses for the least work — all justified on the argument that the worse the EU gets the quicker Britain will be out.
That is the argument Trotskyites used to make about parliamentary socialism: Never take a small step to change things for the better, because it will delay the revolution we really need. Thankfully, we live in a world of small steps and the road to progress always begins with one.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Chris Huhne was formerly Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh and secretary of state for energy and climate change.
