Ms Honeyball gave an insight into her role and experiences as an MEP in the European Parliament.
In the first Parliament and Europe themed Open Lecture on Thursday 21 February 2013, Bill Cash MP, Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee in the House of Commons, discussed Parliament's relationship with Europe, particularly the role and work of the Committee in scrutinising draft EU legislation on behalf of the House of Commons.
Mary Honeyball MEP
Mary Honeyball MEP entered the European Parliament in 2000, following three decades of involvement in Labour politics. She acts as the Labour spokesperson for women’s rights and gender equality, and has been a member of the Culture and Education Committee since 2009.
Lecture transcript
Mary Honeyball MEP: Thank you to the UK Parliament Open Lecture series for inviting me to talk to you and thank you to the European Parliament Office which is also represented here.
I'm sure you all know, but this year marks 40 years of Britain's membership of the EU. We first joined in 1973 so it's a significant anniversary and one that I'm pleased to be able to give this talk on because it's been a chequered time for the UK.
We haven't always wanted to be there; we haven't always been too positive about the EU. But I'm here to put the ‘pro' case. As you know I'm a Labour MEP, and every Labour MEP these days is pro-Europe. We're there to represent the people of this country and we believe very strongly in what we do and we believe very much in the European Union.
And the EU is actually a fascinating and an interesting place. When I first arrived which was a long time ago now - 13 years ago, in 2000 - the thing that struck me first was just how very international it is - which seems obvious. But we don't always appreciate that in this country, where everybody speaks English and even when you're abroad everybody speaks English.
But I was suddenly in an environment when - and there were fewer languages than there are now because it was before the enlargement - but it was a huge experience to be there with people from across Europe sharing common issues and common problems and making common legislation. It's something I will never forget because it was a unique privilege.
And now of course the EU is even bigger – it is 27 member states with 23 official languages stretching from the North of Finland to Cyprus in the South. And I think, speaking to you today, it would be wrong not to mention Cyprus which, sadly, is very much in the news for all the wrong reasons.
I think actually, and I will say this right at the beginning, that the levy was a mistake. The levy on savings was a huge error and I think it's perhaps one of the most - if not the most disastrous mistake - it may prove to be one of the mistakes that the leaders of the Eurozone have made so far in the crisis.
And although the crisis clearly needs to be dealt with and the Euro is not yet through it I think we should avoid the Eurozone crisis colouring what we think about the European Union. Because it's not just Europe and the Euro which has problems: the UK economy is not doing too well at the moment either - we have actually had a double-dip recession which the Euro has in fact avoided.
So we are in the midst of a global economic crisis and I think we should remember that when we talk about the Euro. I think it's unfortunate in this country that when we have media - news, press reports - on Europe, it's always - almost always, I won't tar all the media with the same brush - but it's almost always the down side. And I think we get therefore a distorted picture of what goes on in the European Union and the European Parliament.
One of the things that I hope to do in the next half-an-hour or so is to put the other side of the case - the positive case. No one would say that everything in the EU is perfect and we don't need to change anything - no institution anywhere can claim that.
I would be one of the first people to point out that there are things that need changing and I think everybody in the pro-European camp would agree with that. But what we don't hear enough of is the advantages, the positive things about the EU, and I'm hoping that you will go away with a slightly better understanding - at least as good an understanding as I can give you - of the way that we in the European Parliament see it and the good side to the EU.
I must say though, before I start in any great detail, that the EU is not and has no pretensions to ever be a 'Super-state'. It's something we hear a lot in this country, that: "Oh - the EU's taking over everything - it's going to somehow-or-other become this massive United States of Europe."
That is not the intention; that's never been what the EU was set up to do and we are certainly not on that route. The EU has a very clear set of competencies which it carries out and it's delineated clearly. The principle of subsidiarity - which I'm sure you all know- that member states devolve power down to the lowest possible level and that decisions are taken at the lowest possible level, is very strong indeed. So we are not an EU Super-state and we're not going anywhere near that.
I will also say at the beginning that those who call for a referendum on EU membership at the moment certainly don't really understand the full implications of such a referendum.
We have been, as I said at the beginning, in the EU for 40 years - that is a whole generation and I suspect a lot of you weren't even born in 1973 when Britain joined the EU.
So it's a lot of history, it's a lot of shared values, it's a lot of legislation and it would take an enormous amount of unpicking, not to mention the enormous instability and the difficulties that may be caused by any attempt, or any thoughts even, of withdrawal from the EU.
As far as I'm concerned it’s an absolute non-starter. That is my position and I wanted to make that clear to you before we started because I think that's very much where I'm coming from and where Labour MEPs are coming from.
But what I really want to talk to you about today is the EU in more detail: both the history and the background and what is going on at the moment, and a bit about what I do there and my experiences of working in the Parliament.
So I want to cover: why and how the EU was set up; what the EU stands for; certain milestones in the history of the EU; how the institutions work; what the EU has achieved and the benefits of EU membership; what the current issues are that we're facing and what the future might be.
The EU, as I'm sure you all know, was created at the end of the Second World War out of the ruins of Europe, the real collapse of Europe at the end of the Second World War, when certain leaders of certain countries came together and decided that they wanted to deal with this once and for all.
And I think it was actually a very positive step, not only to build and recreate from the ruins of Europe, but also what the EU did at the time was to represent a new Humanitarianism after the awful happenings of the Second World War.
You see emerging in Europe at the time, and continuing, much more respect for life which is why the EU has, as some of its fundamental principles, ‘equality’ and ‘respect for individuals’- gender equality, anti-racism - and all of that came out of the horrors of the second World War.
It was also set up to combat nationalism which obviously was a major factor in the cause and the duration of the Second World War - and had been in the First World War – when, then and before, the response to trade difficulties and disputes, and territorial disputes was actually to go to war. That had been the history of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire, so we're talking a very, very long time.
The EU sought to overcome those negative attitudes and to build something much more positive in its place. Of course there was also communism and I would be wrong if I claimed that the EU was completely idealistic because of course it wasn’t: part of the founding of the EU was to be a bulwark against the communist countries to the East and also, of course, to provide a European voice along with the American voice in dealing with the Soviet threat and the Soviet battleground.
And there was also the other practical aspect coming out of the Second World War - Marshall Aid and the Marshall Plan. It was felt that the countries that were benefitting from the Marshall plan would be well advised to get together to actually form a common view on that.
So the EU was set up, I think, mainly for idealistic reasons although obviously there were practical elements as well. But certainly the ‘founding fathers’ as they're still known - and they sadly were all fathers - had a very idealistic view of where they wanted to go and I think we still hold on to that in many ways across the EU.
The EU itself did learn from the lessons of the past: the inter-war League of Nations had largely failed because it was just that- a collection of nation states who really didn't have an awful lot in common and couldn't work together for common goals.
So those that founded the EU were determined that that wasn't going to happen again. It also reflected and grew out of the internationalism and the desire to cooperate which was again a legacy of the horrors of the Second World War.
There were quite a lot of bodies which were set up at a similar time: the United Nations itself, of course; NATO; the IMF; the World Bank; the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT]; the Council of Europe as well - they all happened at a similar time during the 1950's when it was felt that war had just been too awful to contemplate happening again and international cooperation was the way forward.
And the EU, I think, was the shining example of that if you like because it was and still is much more than just an international organisation working together for common goals. There are those who believe that the EU should be further integrated and that political integration is a worthwhile goal - and there are others who think that we should go wider and not have such a deep level of political integration but continue to work at the same sort of level as we are now - and that has always been quite a debate in the EU .
My own view is that, now we're 27 member states - Croatia is due to join quite soon and so we will be 28 in the not too distant future - I don't think closer political integration, in the sense that it was envisaged 30-40 years ago, is actually something that can be achieved very easily when you've got such a large EU.
So I think that's not going to go very much further. We will see the EU working on the basis that it is now, I believe - a common currency which is changing and evolving and that may lead to some further political union - but it's very difficult to see that happening, with the EU the size it is, to any meaningful political extent.
It will be interesting to watch how that debate goes. Of course we in the UK are to a large extent on the sidelines of that - because we aren't in the Euro we are not involved in a lot of those debates and discussions in the Eurozone and we would in any event I think resist further political integration.
Having been set up in the way that it was, it will come as no surprise to you to learn that the EU actually has a very strong and fundamental value base: certain principles that the EU is founded on, which a lot of MEPs certainly talk about very eloquently.
They are basically: democracy, the rule of law; human rights; respect and protection of minorities and a functioning market economy. And we're also looking at the capacity to cope with competitive pressures and market forces within the EU - adherence to the aims of Economic and Monetary Union - and all members to enact the body of European Law which is known as the Acquis Communautaire, as I'm sure you all know.
So the values are very important and something which we talk about quite often - and talk about in the context of legislation, which I think is slightly unusual for a British audience - because it isn't viewed in the same way here, and we don't discuss those kind of abstract concepts in the same sort of way.
But I think it's worth emphasising this because those values are very important to the way the EU functions and very important to member states and actually very important to those of us who are representatives in the European Parliament.
The milestones: well, the EU - the European Community - grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community which was set up in 1951, really quite early on, and the founding members were the 6 founding members of what came to be the EEC: Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. They believed in integration.
They thought that integration then might be something they would wish to see projected into the future and they wanted that rather than just cooperation.
So from the very beginning, the EU was set up as an organisation that was not going to be just about international cooperation or European cooperation. It was going to be about more than that and it was going to involve - even at that point - some pooling of sovereignty.
Now, British people - and certain Members of the House of Commons - get very worked up about this idea of sovereignty. I think it's quite an emotionally charged word, but basically what it means is that you will hand over some of your power on the basis that you will get something back in return.
So it's not really a giving up of anything - it's actually an exchange and I think that's actually what the EU has always been about - it's a deal, if you like: we will do that with you and in return we will get that out of the organisation. It's something that started right back at the beginning.
In 1957 was the Treaty of Rome which set up the European Economic Community – the Common Market, it was known as. And also EURATOM because of course the other threat hanging over the world at this time was nuclear weapons. So as well as the good things that shaped the post-war settlement, the fear of nuclear weapons was perhaps the negative side of it.
In 1960 the European Free Trade Association was established which included Britain. 1968 saw the European Customs Union which was the EEC plus one or two others, including Turkey, rather interestingly.
Turkey's association with what is now the EU goes back that long. And the Customs Union was exactly what it said: it removed all internal customs duties and quotas and established a common external tariff.
1973 was the first enlargement of the European Union, in which Denmark and Ireland joined and of course the UK. 40 years ago Britain became a member of the EEC.
In 1974 the European Council was created which is made up from the member state governments and is one of the three institutions which make up the EU, as I'm sure you all know.
There is the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission and those are the three institutions which from this time onward were to form the EU and were to form the basis of the legislative process in the EU.
1979 was the first year that there were direct elections to the European Parliament. Before that time, member state governments had sent representatives to the European Parliament but 1979 was the first direct elections. In 1981, rather interestingly, Greece joined the EU - so Greece has been a member of the EU for a very long time.
What I think we saw then, after direct elections to the European Parliament and after the enlargement of the 1970s, I think what we saw was an increase in confidence in the EU - that it was becoming an accepted institution and that there were things that could be taken forward.
I think what was also interesting during this period is that, in this country, the attitudes of the two main political parties were exactly the opposite of what they are now.
The Labour Party was very opposed to the EU and membership of the Common Market, whereas the Conservative Party were very much more in favour of it. And I think one of the interesting things about politics in this country in relation to the EEC and the EU is how that has really changed to be completely the other way around.
Of course in 1986 one of the really big issues, the defining moments, of the EU took place and that was the setting up the Single Market - the Single European Act - interestingly done by Margaret Thatcher.
It was intended to do exactly that: provide an internal market for goods and services across the whole of the EU without barriers and there were 4 things that it set up to do: free movement of people, goods, services and money - and it remains to this day the one thing that people who are opposed to the EU - who don't even like membership of the EU - want to maintain.
I have yet to meet a politician on any side of any political fence - except maybe some of the more extreme UKIP members - who want Britain to leave the Single Market.
And an awful lot of subsequent EU legislation was actually linked to the Single Market and was intended to make the Single Market more effective. So I think it’s important to hang on to this because after the mid 1980's the single market really was to a very large extent what the EU was about - it had become a trading area - and a very important one these days for us.
Almost half of our exports from the UK go to the EU single market. Were we not to have access to that it would be incredibly serious.
And also, most of the social legislation which features a lot in debates in this country at the moment is designed to provide a level playing field across Europe. So that no individual member state has an advantage or a disadvantage in the Single Market because they have, perhaps, social legislation which isn't quite as good as other member states.
So all the social legislation was set up for that very reason: so you have Health and Safety legislation across the EU which employers and governments have to take because if you had stringent measures in one country and measures which were pretty lax in another, that would give the country that had lax regulations far more of an advantage in the Single Market.
And I think this is worth holding on to because that's the point of the social legislation - it's to actually provide not only good working conditions across the EU but also to provide a level playing field in the Single Market. It's an absolutely integral part of it.
The other thing that happened with the establishment of the Single Market was that Qualified Majority Voting was extended. That's where member states have weighted votes in the Commission and the Council so that no one country can veto proposals, and that’s an important part, too, of the agreement over the Single Market.
Also in the mid-1980's Spain and Portugal joined. Of course, after that were the cataclysmic events of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism which changed the face of Europe and was soon to change the face of the EU.
In 1991- not necessarily linked to it - but 1991 was another important year in the history of the EU because that was the year of the Maastricht Treaty which went on to pave the way for the setting up of the Euro. It was the agreement to move forward to a single currency and, as you all know, the UK had an opt-out from the Maastricht Treaty and we have not as yet joined the Euro.
Also in the mid-1990's Austria, Finland and Sweden joined and also the Schengen Agreement was set up, which is quite significant. Because the UK isn't in it we don't hear very much about it, but the Schengen Agreement actually did away with border controls. So it's now possible to go across Europe without a passport and it has helped internal movement quite significantly.
So the late 1980's and the early 1990's were a very significant time indeed. And then, of course, 2002 was the introduction of the Euro.
Then in 2004 the accession of the former communist countries in the East of Europe, as well as Malta and of course Cyprus. So that's when we ended up being a European Union of 27 member states - well 25 then and Bulgaria and Romania joined slightly later.
And it's this enlargement - this absorbing of the countries of Eastern Europe – that was the main reason why the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which sadly was ridiculed to a large extent in this country - I think, very unfairly because the EU has, amongst other things, kept the peace.
There is an argument that Europe may have stayed at peace anyway, but certainly the setting up of the EU and the absorbing of the former communist countries has contributed to a peaceful Europe.
Anyone born after the Second World War in Europe - certainly in Western Europe - has not had to face the destruction that our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents suffered. I think that is a big achievement and should be recognised.
After the Euro we saw the Lisbon Treaty which was aimed at modernising the EU after the enlargement and set up various things which have shaped the way that the EU operates now.
We have a President of the European Council now - that's Herman van Rompuy. We have the High Representative for Foreign affairs and Security policy who is the British Commissioner, Baroness Catherine Ashton.
The European Parliament itself has gained more power over legislation. We do have ‘legislative co-decision’, as we call it, with the Council of Ministers in most areas now. Not all of them but most of them.
What that means is that when legislation comes through the Parliament, if it is legislation which is part of the co-decision process we will go through it in committee; we will amend it, it will go through the plenary session of the European Parliament and then it will go through the European Council.
If there's disagreement between what the European Parliament wants and what the European Council wants there will then be process for conciliation where we aim to sort out those differences. In fact we have to sort them out because, if the points at issue haven't been resolved within 6 weeks, the entire piece of legislation falls - so there's quite a pressure to get it right and end it.
One of the other things that the Lisbon Treaty did was to involve national parliaments more in the way that the European Parliament works.
I think that's actually helped better lines of communication, which is quite important because, when you have layers of government and layers of legislative making bodies, I think you do need to know what's going on in each particular place and I'm not sure that's always worked particularly well between the European Parliament and national parliaments.
We've also reduced the number of MEPs and we've taken on some new policy areas under the Lisbon Treaty, such as Sport and Tourism.
So that's a brief run-through of the key events in the history of the EU – I think it’s been quite a busy 40 years actually!
The EU has grown from being quite a small, fairly experimental body. It's now very much part of our governance and something it would be very difficult not to have, now that we've been in it for such a very long time.
In terms of the institutions themselves the European Parliament works very differently from the UK Parliament where we are now.
The whole EU concept is about consensus. It's actually about people talking to each other, trying to resolve any points of issue and that runs through the whole way that the organisation works.
It's not only because consensus is a good thing - which it is - it's also because the EU itself has evolved so that no one country and no one of the three parts of the EU, the three institutions, has too much power.
It's very much a balance and we're always trying to balance the interests of larger member states against the interests of smaller member states - making sure that things are agreed and that the consensus actually works in practice. Very different from the British tradition. I think a lot of us found it an interesting experience when we first started in the European Parliament.
We've also tried to make the parliament quite a family-friendly place. We do actually work sensible office hours, we start at nine in the morning and we finish at six at night and we have a rather nice two-hour continental lunch break - which is quite nice except that the Brits always work through the lunch break. So it has very much more of a working-day feel about it unlike some national parliaments. It's really quite a good working environment.
The other thing I want to say to this audience is that - particularly since the 2004 enlargement - English has become very much the working language.
All the Eastern European countries had English as their second language, so English is the social language used and quite often - and it's happening more and more - meetings are conducted solely in English because so many people speak English as their second language.
We don't seem to understand this or understand just how useful this is for us and how much of an advantage it gives us. This is an international institution with 23 official languages and the language that they choose as their common one is the language that we speak.
I always find there's some sort of irony here about the British attitude to the EU - which is semi-detached often at best - to the fact that the EU has absorbed our language so wholeheartedly. It's just one of those rather strange situations - I think we would do well to ponder on that.
Basically, the way that the European political system works was set up on the French model. So it's very much like the French model and also like the American model as well. The European Parliament is a legislature - that's what we do.
The Commission and the Council are much more like an administration. And the way it works is that the European Commission - which is comprised, at the top level, of one Commissioner per member state - the Commission will propose legislation. Nobody else at the moment has the power to do so though I think the Commission do take on board what's going on - what's important and what's topical.
It will then come to the Parliament and to the Council of Ministers to legislate or to amend it and then to vote on it. Then, if it needs to be, it will be interpreted by the European Court of Justice and then enforced by the Commission. So that's essentially the process.
It's quite useful to know that and to remember how it works because I think what people find a little bit unusual and unlike other experiences is the role of the Commission.
There's quite often criticism that the Commission is not democratic. It's indirectly democratic in that Commissioners generally have been senior politicians in their own countries and they are appointed by the member states.
There's also the idea - particularly prevalent in this country - that the EU is not democratic: that there is a ‘democratic deficit’. It's true that turn-out in the elections to the European Parliament are not great but then, turn-out at elections for Local Government are not very good either - they're about the same.
The European Parliament and Local Government turn-outs are similar, almost always.
Of course the European Council is made up of member state governments, so that is elected. Everything does a five year term though you may not find the three institutions in synchronisation with each other. But I think there's a lot said about the ‘democratic deficit’, as people choose to refer to it, which is actually not true in practice.
Of course there are things that could be done to make it more democratic and it is still based on member states. In that sense, it's not a European wide electoral body - it's MEPs returned by member states and member state governments, and the Commissioners that are appointed by member states.
I think when you talk about things like a democratic deficit you have to be a bit clearer about the definition of that. And although I don't think that the system of election in the EU is completely perfect - nothing is - it's not as bad as many of its detractors would make out.
The principal of subsidiarity which I mentioned earlier is important in this context because nobody in the EU seeks to legislate at European level unless they have to: legislation and rule-making are done at the lowest possible level.
We're always very clear that that is the case and most important issues are still done by member states: taxation, social security, health education - to name some of the big ones - are still done by member states. They're not done by the European Union. So we're not talking about a ‘Super-state’ or any sort of supra-national infrastructure really.
We're talking about a few things, like the internal market, which means legislation that make the internal market function better; we're talking about a common security and defence policy and we're talking, obviously, about the Euro.
What we aren't talking about in the EU -what we don't do - is any of those really basic things which are still carried out at member state level.
The EU has achieved a considerable amount over the last 40 years and one of the things I’d like to talk a little bit about is the whole concept of ‘soft power’. It's often used when talking about the EU and it's quite important. The EU does have representation across the world.
The EU has been part of peacekeeping forces and we do have - not very evolved - but there is a common security and defence policy. There's also power in economic terms where, because the EU is such a large trading block, it obviously has power and influence in that way.
It’s not power in terms of going out and showing that you are bigger and better than everybody else - it's more about influence. I think that's a good role for the EU because, after all, the EU is its member states and the EU as a block doesn't want to supersede member states.
So, ‘soft power’ is a very helpful way of achieving certain useful aims. One of the things I always like to cite in this is Turkey - which still hasn't yet joined the EU and may not wish to at this point as much as it did.
But there was a time when Turkey very much wanted to become a member of the EU, and was very keen to comply with the Acquis Communautaire - the criteria for joining. One of the things the Acquis states is that no EU member state should have the death penalty.
Turkey did, of course, and they abolished the Death penalty because they wanted to join the EU. So that's a measure of the sort of ‘soft power’ that we're talking about.
There are also a lot of trade agreements which are I think very helpful in the modern context; as we speak there is a potential trade agreement being negotiated with the United States.
It won't surprise you to know that the EU and the US together account for 50 per cent of the world's GDP and nearly a third of the world's trade flows. So a trade agreement between the EU and the US would be a good idea.
Barack Obama has the same idea. He says that he is encouraged by this and by the benefits of
"an ambitious and comprehensive market-opening arrangement for agriculture and manufactured goods, services and investment. The identification of ways to promote compatible regulatory approaches, tackle behind-the-border barriers and possible approaches to intellectual property rights."
That quote from President Obama explains very well the benefits of trade agreements with other countries and the advantages that will bring to the member states in EU and to the US themselves
Other things that the EU has done and the benefits it has brought is a high level of environmental protection. The environment of course doesn't stop at national borders and is an obvious area to be carried out by the EU.
Most environmental protection is based on the polluter-pays principal and we have air and water legislation, waste management, biodiversity protection and the idea of environmental liability. Blue Flag beaches were an EU initiative. Things like air quality for those of us who live in London, or who visit London, are incredibly important.
Another environmental matter which is becoming huge is climate change; the EU has a very pivotal role in tackling climate change and the system for trading emissions which will aim to reduce harmful carbon emissions by 20% by 2020.
We've also done a lot on consumer protection. One of the things which is always cited, which I'm sure you know, was bringing down roaming charges for mobile phones.
I was actually on the committee when that went through and it was a really helpful thing to do and just one example of very many consumer protection measures that have gone through.
We also, even in the midst of the scandal over horse meat, still have a role in food safety. We've introduced a lot of legislation on food labelling - what goes into food - and health measures and it's those kinds of things.
So, that's just a very few examples of the kinds of day-to-day work that the EU does. Of course, we are facing at the moment a raft of current issues - not only the international debt, the sovereign debt crisis in the Euro which is not resolved yet by a long way, even though there are moves afoot to establish Banking Union, that's still got some way to go.
The Common Agricultural Policy [CAP] which has always been a thorn in the side of the United Kingdom is at the moment going through a process of reform. Not before time I may say.
The CAP still takes up 20 per cent of EU spending, which is an extraordinary amount when you think about it, and it also isn't part of the legislative co-decision process. So there are a lot of major issues around agricultural funding.
We're trying to get away from the direct support to producers which is the basis of it at the moment and to move towards agricultural development and more environmentally-friendly measures, which are called ‘greening of agriculture’.
But there's still quite a long way to go and there are still quite a lot of vested interests who don't really want the system to change very much. If you're interested in it, this is all happening at the moment so it might be something you'd be interested in following.
We've also seen - to look at the wider political sphere - the rise of far-right parties across Europe which I think is quite a worrying development.
There have been far-right parties in several European countries and I think this is something which we all need to watch out for because once those sorts of things take hold it can snowball and get worse.
Also I particularly wanted to talk about the tension that comes and goes between the Eurozone members and those who aren't in the Euro. All the new accession countries are due to join the Euro at some point though not all of them have.
The concept of a ‘two-speed Europe’ is talked about sometimes and obviously, if that happened, the UK would be on the outside.
I don't think, personally, that would be a very good place for the UK to be because we would miss out on being there at the table. This is important: if you aren't fully part of an institution you clearly can't have a say in what happens in it.
What happens in the EU does affect this country severely and to cite countries like Norway and Switzerland as being: "Oh yes - we can go and leave the EU, or be semi-part of the EU - and do what they do...".
Well, Norway - and Switzerland, but particularly Norway - does implement EU regulations. They choose to be bound by EU regulations, yet they have absolutely no say in what those regulations are.
The same would be true for any country that were to leave because the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place and we are tied economically, or tied in terms of trade and there are all sorts of ways that Europe is part of a whole.
It's impossible, I would say now, for one European country not to be affected by that. So if you decide that you're going to leave the EU, you lose that place in the negotiations and being able to have some say in what goes on.
I don't think that's a very good place for us to be and I therefore think that we need to stay where we are, make sure that we have that voice and make sure that we are heard and that we can therefore have some impact on the policies of the EU.
The EU is here to stay. There is no going back and I think we should celebrate the advances that the EU has made. There are advances that I've talked about and there are other things as well.
My contention, having been in the EU and a Member of the European Parliament for a long time now is that the EU is fundamentally a progressive institution. Interestingly, though I say that, it's completely controlled by the centre-right political parties at the moment.
The majority in the European Parliament is centre-right, and in the Commission and of course in the Council of Ministers. But even so the European social model is still very much in existence and the values that the EU was founded on are still very much there.
There are of course huge problems and no one is denying the depth of the crisis of the Euro but we mustn't forget that it's also a global economic crisis. I firmly believe that the UK has to stay in Europe and I think I will leave it with this question: What would happen were we to leave?
Although President Obama quite clearly welcomes a trade agreement with the EU it's becoming ever more obvious that that's as far as it goes.
The US is now much more looking towards the Pacific and I think that old relationship, where the US saw Britain as the ‘bridge to the EU’ – all part of the ‘special relationship’ and the wartime alliances – that has, to all intents and purposes, disappeared.
In a world where we see the rise of new countries such as India and China it's more important than ever that UK stays within the EU and its large trading block.
Our place is very firmly there and if we weren't there, where would we go?
END