Eurosceptics back on the attack after brief respite

Date: 14/12/1995

By Geoff Meade

THE hibernation of UK Prime Minister John Major's Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers was never going to last very long.

After a brief slumber, they are back on the war-path, jolted awake not only by renewed federalist sentiments voiced in Paris and Bonn, but also by their belief that European integration could be on the run.

This time, Major is hunting whole-heartedly with his rebel pack, warning that the single market is under threat from the rush towards full economic and monetary union in 1999. He will also claim in Madrid this weekend that the UK is far from isolated on key issues facing next year's Intergovernmental Conference (IGC).

Even if the UK is isolated - on the national veto, qualified majority voting (QMV), the powers of the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice - there is no backing down now, with a difficult general election creeping over the horizon.

In fact, there has never been a better time for Major to appease the growing number of sceptics by getting tough over the UK's future EU role. More than an element of 'I-told-you-so' is creeping into his government's stand as doubts surface in Germany about enlargement and the strike-bound streets of Paris are littered with the debris of a backlash against an EMU-driven economic programme in France.

These wobbles have given new confidence to British ministers and Conservative backbenchers who are resisting everything from a EU defence policy to the erosion of the sacrosanct right of national veto.

Major worried the Euro-rebels earlier this year when he described French President Jacques Chirac as “a breath of fresh air”. But that has now turned into a chill wind following the Chirac-Kohl joint open letter to the Madrid summit setting out their demands for full and fast integration.

This smacked of brave talk in the UK in the face of growing odds and Major responded in the British parliament by reaffirming the UK's opposition to extending QMV and “massive” new powers for the Strasbourg Parliament, opposition which he said would not change as the IGC proceeds next year.

The government's confidence over Europe was best summed up by Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, who told the House of Commons last week: “It is fashionable to bash Brussels. It is the bureaucratic capital of the world. It is the home of red tape. Many of these criticisms are justified. But the fact is that under the new Commission, things may now be changing.”

This reference to Jacques Santer's oft-quoted maxim that the EU should do less, but do it better may be wishful thinking, but it has been seized on as the Tory creed over Europe in the face of what is seen as the Franco-German determination to do more and do it quicker.

But the most effective card in Major's Euro pack, as the member states knuckle down to the last stages of the single currency process and the first stages of the IGC, is the voice of the ordinary voter.

At least eight EU governments will have to stage a referendum on any IGC deal and no one has yet forgotten the shock of the Danish referendum on Maastricht which stopped integration, albeit briefly, in its tracks. Major's message in Madrid - and for the foreseeable future - will be that Europe will trip up again if it forgets that lesson and races ahead of the people in whose interests it professes to serve.