Europe

EU CONSTITUTION

• Labour are determined to sign up to the EU Constitution, which would transfer powers from Britain to Brussels. Brussels would win new powers over asylum, immigration, criminal law, industrial relations and energy, making national governments even less accountable.

• The EU Constitution would give the EU a new President, its own foreign minister with his own diplomatic service and the EU would have bigger role in defence. As Hans Martin Bury, the German Europe Minister, has put it, ‘the Constitution is the birth certificate for the United States of Europe’.

• There could even be a European Public Prosecutor – described as a potential ‘engine of oppression’ by the Labour-dominated European Scrutiny Committee - who could initiate prosecutions.

EURO

• Labour are still committed to scrapping the pound. Joining the euro would mean handing over control of interest rates to an unelected, unaccountable body in Brussels. It is onesize-fits-all interest rates that are doing such damage to economies like Germany’s.

BRINGING POWERS BACK

• Mr Blair promised that: ‘we are not giving up the power to set our asylum laws’. All talk. Far from protecting powers over asylum, he has given them away by stealth. As the European Commission’s spokesman, Mr Friso Roscam Abbing, has said: ‘There is nothing in these protocols that allows a British government to opt back out again, so Britain is bound by them. Say they set a quota of 10,000 a year. Well, the 10,001st case could say to a British judge, “your government is bound by EU rules and is not at liberty not to consider my claim”’.

• Labour gave up Britain’s opt-out to the job-destroying Social Chapter.

• Labour have given up Britain’s veto over asylum and immigration policies affecting our country.

• Labour have failed to lead economic reform in the EU. Even Romano Prodi has described the lack of reform in the EU as a ‘big failure’.

BUREAUCRACY

• According to the CBI, new employment rights, many of which originate in Brussels, cost British business as much as £12.3 billion between 1997 and the end of 2001.

• EU Working Time regulations have a recurring annual cost to the UK of £2.3 billion.

• The European Works Council has a recurring annual cost of £14.5 million and part-time work regulations have a recurring annual cost of £27.4 million.

CONSERVATIVE ACTION

• On the first day of a Conservative government, we will set a date for a referendum on the EU constitution. We will hold a referendum within six months of winning a
general election.

• Conservatives will bring back powers from Brussels to Britain where the EU is performing badly. Our priorities are: the return of local and national control over our fisheries, restoring our opt-out from the Social Chapter and spending more of our overseas aid budget from London and less from Brussels. We will also negotiate any necessary opt-outs from directives that stop us carrying out our policy on asylum and immigration.

• Conservatives are opposed to the EU Constitution. Countries have Constitutions.Nation states make Treaties with each other.

• Conservatives want a flexible Europe. We will not stop other countries going ahead with deeper integration if they do not try to force those countries, like Britain, who do not want deeper integration to go along with them.

• Conservatives will slash red tape from the EU. We will end the ‘gold-plating’ of EU directives by UK civil servants that add burdens on business, only back EU laws that have been costed and have a demonstrable benefit. We will fight for greater powers for national parliaments so that if more than half find that an EU law is excessively intrusive or burdensome it would be blocked.

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