Alphen, Netherlands. 17
April. Have I missed something? When did Britain or indeed any EU
member-state formally hand-over its foreign and security policy to Brussels? Today a meeting will take place in Geneva at
which the American, Russian, Ukrainian and EU foreign ministers will sit down
to discuss the current crisis. As far as
I can see this is a first and establishes a dangerous precedent for the conduct
of the foreign policy of Europeans by the EU.
Indeed, it is precisely the kind of functional precedent European
federalists use to prosecute creeping federalism. It must stop as it is neither effective nor
efficient and certainly not legitimate.
In AD 46 at the end of
the Roman Civil War Cato the Younger warned that “Necessity is the argument of
tyrants, it is the creed of slaves”. He
was speaking as he was about to commit suicide having watched Pompey and Caesar
destroy the Roman Republic in the name of Rome.
Don’t worry as I am not going to fall on my sword even though Sheffield
United did lose 5-2 to Hull in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley last
Saturday.
Cato’s words were
prophetic as Rome moved to greatness under the emperors but only at the expense
of liberty. The headlong rush to give
ever more power to Brussels in the name of necessity is a similar such
political sleight of hand. The strange
thing is that national leaders allow this to happen behind the backs of their
people. I can fully understand why officials
in London’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office want to do this. The FCO as an institution has lost all faith
in Britain and its leaders and believe to a man and woman that Little Britain
can only survive in the comforting bureaucratic embrace of an ‘over-mighty’
EU.
When William Hague, my
fellow Yorkshireman, became Foreign Secretary I thought “na then, him at’t
Foreign Office will give them southern diplomatic plonkers some reet Yorkshire
nous” (Translation; Mr Hague will ensure Foreign Office Mandarins protect the
British national interest). I could not
have been more wrong (it happens once every five centuries or so). Hague has gone completely native by allowing
his Mandarins to convince him that it is in the British interest to hand over
foreign and security policy to the EU in the midst of a crisis for it marks the
beginning of the end of a distinctive British foreign and security policy.
Some of you will no
doubt be accusing me at this point of falling into the grip of those who equate
the EU with the dark arts. Not a bit of
it. I am more than willing to see the EU
in the room with the big three. That is
precisely what happened in the E3/EU+3 talks with Iran last year. The EU joined Britain, France and Germany in
the room with the US, China and Russia.
So, can the EU move to
greatness? Indeed, if an EU foreign
policy could ensure European effectiveness then at least a case could be made
for a European foreign policy even if it fails to meet my standards for
representative democracy and legitimacy.
However, an EU foreign policy is anything but effective. Baroness Ashton (bless her soon to be
departed Lancastrian heart) far from representing the collected and collective will
of the EU and its peoples (i.e. me) will in fact say very little that would
convince Moscow of Europe’s collective will.
At the same time she is by extension neutering the only voices in Europe
to which Moscow might listen because of their vestigial Realpolitik power –
Britain, France and Germany.
EU foreign policy
paradoxically is about the representation of the weak at the expense of the
strong. Indeed, an EU foreign and
security policy is less not more than the sum of its parts as it reflects
neither power nor policy. Ashton will
therefore sit in the Geneva room (I know which one) with twenty-eight hopelessly
split EU member-states sitting on her shoulders plus the European Parliament
and the European Commission (the EU’s twenty-ninth and thirtieth states respectively). She will say precisely nothing of substance.
What is more important
is that her sole presence marks the beginning of the end of the Republic as
represented by the nation-states and the creation of a form of horribly inefficient
and ineffective empire which will make me less safe, less secure, less free
with less of a voice. Like Sulla,
Pompey, Caesar and Augustus before her she claims (not personally) ever more
power unto the EU in the name of the very Republic she is destroying.
Therefore, handing European conduct
of the Ukraine crisis to the EU is a dangerous oxymoron.
Indeed, an EU foreign and security policy can neither be effective nor
efficient let alone legitimate because it does not reflect the very thing vital
to crisis management - reality.
Julian Lindley-French
