Although the issue of whether Britain should join the euro remains on the margins of political debate, as far as companies looking to invest in the UK, the question refuses to go away, as demonstrated by this recent article in the Financial Times.

Britain's consistent economic growth during the past years has pushed the euro off the political agenda. However, if investment decisions by major companies start to go against the UK because of Britain's status outside the eurozone, a re-think may be in order.

Just to give some examples of the feelings of the business community, Hans Haefeli, Vice President of US construction company Caterpillar, which employs 11,000 Britons, has stated that "fundamentally it would make life easier for us if Britain were in the euro" while Andreas Ludwig, head of Austrian company Zumtobel which employs 650 people in County Durham, commented that "not being in the euro means we are exposed to currency fluctuations and that is a problem".

Moreover, Toyota, the world's largest car manufacturer, is expected to decide within the next year whether to make a big investment in its UK plant in Derby or to increase its resources in other sites in Europe. This decision will be a good litmus test of whether by staying out of the euro the British economy is being hamstrung.

The European Parliament was yesterday lucky (?) enough to be treated to a hilarious spat between arch Eurosceptic Tory Roger Helmer and the former leader of the Conservative MEPs (turned Lib Dem) Bill Newton-Dunn. Both aired their dirty washing in a series of reply-to-all emails that dropped into the inbox of every British MEP and their increasingly amused assistants.

For your enjoyment I'll re-print the row in full (to make clear who's saying what I've italicised Roger Helmer's comments):


"It makes me proud to think that we have to go cap-in-hand to the EU Commission for permission to spend our own money."


"But, as even Roger knows but is unwilling to admit, it is not UK money. Years ago the UK parliament made over part of its VAT revenues to the EU to be the EU's own resources."


"Yet another reason why we should be Better Off Out".


"Which is not your party's policy. Why not be honest, just for once, and join UKIP?"


"Dangerous ground, here, Bill. You may accuse me of many things, but dishonesty is not one of them. I have been absolutely clear and direct about my views on Europe -- which is what gets up your nose."


"Not at all. You twist, distort, sail close to the wind implying things...you are deeply dishonest - not least with yourself, since everybody knows you should be in UKIP"


"As I have frequently observed, Bill, you need a dictionary, as you seem to have a poor grasp of the plain meaning of words".


"Your self-delusion is that you are honest - like fundamentalist religious preachers who preach one thing but are really something very different. Ring any bells ?"

Back at work in the European Parliament

David Cameron and his Tory Party are really plumbing the depths in the debate on the Reform Treaty. Cameron's article for this morning's Sun was rabid and riddled with untruths.

In particular, his claim that the Reform Treaty would "transfer power from our elected Parliament to the EU's unelected bureaucrats" is a flat out lie. In fact the opposite is the case. The Reform Treaty specifically increases the power of elected parliaments not bureaucrats by increasing the role of national parliaments and the European Parliament. It strictly limits EU action to the policy areas agreed by Member States in the treaties. Mr Cameron has either not read the Treaty or has no understanding of its contents - perhaps not surprising since he is too arrogant to meet with his right-wing counterparts in Europe.

He talks about Gordon Brown's "shameless arrogance" as being a "big cancer eating away at trust in politics". On the contrary, it is Cameron who is displaying shameless arrogance by telling lies to the British people.

Cameron's dishonest assertions follow on from William Hague's barmy claim that the Reform Treaty would see the EU take Britain's seat on the UN Security Council. This is simply not true.

Cameron thinks that he is a "euro-realist" and pledged to create a new-centre right group in Europe which would include the Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topalenek's Eurosceptic Civic Democrat Party. But the Czech PM is refusing to hold a referendum on the Reform Treaty as it does not create any new powers for the EU. Topolanek's stance speaks volumes about the Tories' opportunism and obsessive Europhobia.

David Cameron and his party seem to be pursuing a policy of 'little Englander' isolationism that would greatly damage Britain's national interests. For a man who hopes to become Prime Minister, his tactics and arguments on the Reform Treaty have been gutter politics of the highest order.

A very good leader in today's FT is online here.

It is a very simple argument in favour of the new treaty, and explains very clearly why a referendum is not needed.

While the Tories have been loudly demanding a referendum on the proposed EU treaty, they have also released an alternative treaty of their own, though without so much fanfare.

Their “Simplifying Treaty”, is written by Timothy Kirkhope MEP, the Conservatives’ leader in the European Parliament, and is warmly endorsed in the preface by William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Having read it, it quickly becomes clear why the Tories have not been shouting from the roof tops about their “Simplifying Treaty”: because it includes the bulk of the proposed new treaty Tony Blair agreed to in June.

So, senior Tories know the EU needs reform and agree with much of what is already proposed but they also know that calling for a referendum wins them easy headlines in a period when positive coverage of their party has been at a premium.

It also highlights the Tory’s usual divisions over Europe. The extreme Eurosceptics are discontent and very vocal and, while leading figures in the Conservative Party know reform of the EU is essential, they are too scared to back the treaty (even though they largely agree with it) because it would cause an ugly spat between the two sides.

There is a detailed analysis of Kirkhope’s Simplifying Treaty on my website. You can read it by clicking here.

A few links.

Sensible article from Peter Riddell in the Times here.

Only just found this but earlier in the month the Daily Mirror revealed David Cameron received a less than warm welcome from some Yorkshire Tories.

And finally a truly astonishing brawl between Bolivian congressmen.

UKIP are busy trying to distance themselves from Ashley Mote, found guilty last week of several fraud charges relating to false benefit claims he made before he became an MEP.

Mote was elected as a UKIP MEP. Indeed, he was their top candidate in the South East. Did they really not check his character and financial background before they selected him to represent the party in the European elections? Of course, when the news came out that he was facing so many criminal charges, UKIP kicked him out of the party (though they have not done this yet to their MEP Tom Wise following the allegations against him of financial irregularities over the use of office funds - if they do, they will have lost a quarter of the MEPs elected as UKIP in 2004!).

Ashley Mote has now joined the far-right neo-fascist "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty" group, which gives you an idea of the type of political views UKIP seems to attract.

Ironically, Mote spent most of his time as an MEP making allegations about the EU accounts. Now it is he who has been found guilty of eight counts of false accounting. The other crimes Mote was found guilty of include eight charges of obtaining a money transfer by deception, four charges of evading liability and one charge of failing to notify of a change of circumstances.

The Telegraph published a bizarre insight into the world of Euroscepticism recently in this article by Ruth Lea.

She wondered "who will raise the alarm" about Brussels "being out to clobber the City". Perhaps the reason no-one has, is that there is nothing to be alarmed about.

"Brussels", after all, is simply where we meet our fellow members of the EU to negotiate on common rules for our common market. The idea that the rest of them are out to get us is uttertly ridiculous, especially as they all benefit from a well-performing City!

By all means, work hard to get the details of the Financial Services Action Plan right. If we do, the City will reap substantial benefits. But to brand the whole idea as a "Brussels" plot on the basis of figures from "Open Europe" - an anti-EU campaign group - and to dismiss the constructive approach of the government as biased is standing the world on its head!

Labour is not given much credit for its environmental policies. Yet, in its 10 years in power, it has introduced, to name just the main measures,:

* The climate change levy
* The renewable energy obligation
* The energy efficiency commitment, subsidising energy efficiency projects and home insulation
* Differential car tax
* Company car tax based on emissions, not mileage
* Zero stamp-duty on carbon-neutral homes
* Measures to green government procurement

As a result, the 28 percent increase in Britain’s GDP since Labour came to power has been accompanied by a fall in greenhouse gas emissions of eight percent and in CO2 of one percent, breaking the link – for the first time since the industrial revolution – between economic growth and pollution. An important turn-around, even if much more remains to be done.

Labour, indeed, has taken the lead in getting the whole of Europe to sign up to the target of reducing CO2 emissions by 20 percent over the next 12 years. The plans also include the ambitious target of generating 20 percent of the EU's fuel from renewable sources while increasing the use of bio-fuels up to 10 percent.

So, the Tories seem to have abandoned their short-lived, "moderate" strategy and taken a turn to the right and deeper into anti-European territory.

The move comes in a desperate attempt by Cameron to boost his lagging popularity. It might help him placate the right wing of his party, and save him from attempts by them to oust him, but it will not help with the wider public.

The manoevre comes via a report drawn up by former cabinet minister John Redwood who claims his “war on red tape” will cut £14 billion, in what he described as “a tax cut by any other name”. But this money isn’t going to magically appear out of thin air. It will come at a cost: less safety protection at work, no statutary paid holidays for employees, no guaranteed maternity or paternity leave, lower standards of consumer protection and more damage to the environment.

Such ‘magic money’ is guesswork as to how much it will really save companies, but it is extraordinary to focus on cutting health and safety legislation where any short term saving will be outweighed by long term costs to the Health service.

Will they spell out to people that "we’ll give you tax cuts, but by the way you might not be able to have any paid holidays any more at work"? A strange way to win hearts and minds!

As to the promise to opt-out of European legislation, they have (of course) totally ignored the point that many of these rules are intended to cut red tape. The fact that a small firm can now register a trademark once and it is valid across 27 European countries, instead of having to go through 27 different national procedures each with their own forms, fees and hassle, is a benefit from EU legislation. So is the ability of British lorries to take our exports to, say, Milan, showing only a single administrative document at frointiers instead of the dozen or so at each frontier that used to be necessary.

And unilaterally opting out of the common rules for the common market that we have agreed with our European partners is not so easy. Do the Tories really think that they will say "yes, by all means, play to a different set of rules from the rest of us, we don't mind"? Would they let British companies alone not abide by minimum standards for environmental protection, consumer protection, workplace safety, decent treatment of staff and so on?

Of course they wouldn't. It would mean the end of the common market. The Tory Eurosceptics know this. They see it as part of their strategy for leaving the EU, by making demands they know cannot be met, but they prefer not to spell that out openly.

All this is further evidence of a clear lurch to the right, even beyond traditional Tory values, to a new hard line approach that even traditional tories should find difficult to swallow.

A constituent emailed me yesterday asking me if I had heard about a new play in London by Richard Bean. It’s apparently a farce with the central character a Labour MEP.

My interest piqued, I googled away to discover that it had received a bit of a savaging in the press, mainly because it was so absurdly Europhobic!

And which bastion of liberal, pro-European England was it that criticised the play most fiercely? Why, it’s the Evening Standard whose reviewer was “repelled by the loutish simplicities of its Europhobic politics”!

Nicholas de Jonhg’s review also reveals the play includes “the odd vibrator, handcuffs and a prosthetic hand”, the line “Your wanking hand is on fire" and the sight of an MEP with a vibrator in his mouth, which suggests the play isn’t set in Constitutional Affairs Committee, Working Group E.

The Times review concludes with “Yuk”.

One vaguely positive review I found is the Telegraph’s, which enjoyed the gags about the EU and, incredibly, managed to shoe-horn a dig about the Reform Treaty in, which is obsessive even by my standards!

I was very amused to read the one performance that came close to salvaging the show was Richard Moore’s, who played a “boorish”, "curmudgeonly", “no-nonsense Yorkshireman”, UKIP MEP. I wonder who their inspiration was?

Those who still think the proposed Reform Treaty is a federalist plot would do well to read what the federalists themselves think about it!

Looking at the latest issue of the “New Federalist” magazine, I see that they say:

“The results of the spring Eurobarometer [opinion poll] indicate that two thirds of Europeans (66%) subscribe to the idea of the European Constitution. However, this didn’t prevent he EU heads of State and Government, at the last European Summit (21-23 June), to drive the EU in a very different direction”.

They go on to ask:

“What is left from the ambition to reform the EU into a more efficient, democratic and legitimate enlarged Union? The result, full of compromises, opt-out opportunities and special texts for certain countries, is not going to give rise to a treaty that wins any federalist awards. Indeed, the result is extremely disappointing for anyone who had been campaigning for a Constitution for Europe and in particular for the Constitutional Treaty. What is left from the improvements achieved by the Convention? Where did the substance of the Constitutional Treaty go?”

In their assessment:

"The constitutional concept, which consisted in replacing all existing Treaties by a single text called ‘Constitutional Treaty’ is abandoned. In fact, this involves much more than just loosing the name “Constitution”, as the new Treaty will lose in fact its constitutional character. It starts with the suppression of the Preamble and the European symbols from the Treaty. Common values and symbols are not indispensable to an institutional settlement, but perhaps desirable to create the premise of a European identity. It continues with the opt-out agreement of the Charter of Fundamental Rights for the UK. Thus the civil and social rights given by the Charter are only applicable for certain citizens but not for all.

"What is perhaps more damageable is the loss of the possibility for the EU to speak with one strong voice in the world. Indeed the compromise reached is a water downed CFSP with the loss of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Now the foreign Minister will be called ‘High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’. What is the use of having a High representative, with very limited powers?

"Furthermore, the lack of a clear terminology and efficiency of EU-Legislation contributes to the substantive change of the Constitutional Treaty. For instance the supremacy of EU law will be deleted and replaced by a declaration on the supremacy of EU law. Then, the denomination of ‘EU framework law’ and ‘EU law’ will be abandoned and instead the existing denomination of ‘regulations’, ‘directives’ and ‘decisions’ will be kept.

"...this summit showed once again that Europe is currently only the sum of nationalist ambitions and Machiavellian intrigues between EU capitals.”

This extremely disappointed reaction of the federalists should make anyone take claims of the Reform Treaty being a federalist conspiracy with a pinch of salt!

Hooray for public service broadcasting and its obligation to provide balanced reporting! It doesn't always work, but at least it tries.

After weeks of reading biased, factually inaccurate, 'briefings'
on the contents of the proposed Reform Treaty in much of the press, it was a relief to read the BBC's reasonably balanced briefing on the treaty.

It aims to provide readers with a good understanding of the main arguments about the Treaty - but that means that it, too, is drawn on to the territory of having to focus on myths that are already out there, such as whether it "gives Europe a US-style president", whether "an EU foreign minister will sideline national ministers" and whether legal personality makes the EU "like a country." It is also obliged, to avoid accusations of bias, to give due space and seriousness to some of these allegations.

Nonetheless, it does so in a reasonably dispassionate and above all jargon-free manner, so well done to its author, Stephen Mulvey.

Topically, it dismisses the nonsense put about this week by eurosceptics that Britain would have to give up its seat on the UN Security Council. Hmmm just a thought but perhaps William Hague and the Tory front-bench should give it a read before putting out any more misleading and spurious press statements on the treaty.

William Hague is now joining the clamour that the Reform Treaty is identical to the abandoned Constitutional Treaty - but even with his position of responsibility, without looking very far into the facts.

As I said in the parliamentary debate (see blog entry July 11), the proposed Reform Treaty may indeed salvage 90 percent of the pragmatic changes to the EU institutions that had been in the Constitutional Treaty. But recent scientific research shows that human beings and mice are genetically 90% identical. However, the 10% difference is crucial - and the same goes for the Reform Treaty!

The constitutional concept has been abandoned; the High Representative has not been changed into an EU Foreign Minister; symbols such as the EU flag and anthem have been dropped; and the numerous derogations and opt-outs for the UK means that, even more for us, the Reform Treaty is substantively different from the Constitutional Treaty.

But if you don’t want to take my word for it, why not ask David Cameron’s European allies in the Czech Republic?

Cameron had pledged to create a new centre-right group in Europe to rival the EPP which would include the Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek’s Eurosceptic Civic Democrat Party. But the Czech PM is refusing to hold a referendum on the Reform Treaty as it does not create any new powers for the EU. Topolanek's stance speaks volumes about the Tories opportunism and obsessive Europhobia.

David Cameron's faltering leadership means that, in desperation,
he is turning to euroscepticism to placate the right-wing of the Tory party. But, in trying to stir up fears and create myths about this treaty, he is undermining his national and international credibility as a potential Prime Minister.

Following the devastating floods that hit many parts of Yorkshire in June, many people are asking me what the EU is doing to help.

When floods hit Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic in the summer of 2002, the EU stepped in to offer assistance to those countries to help them recover from the crisis. That precedent led to European countries agreeing to set up a European Solidarity Fund, which the EU uses to help countries struck by similar natural disasters, as it did in 2005 for Romania and Bulgaria.

This fund IS available to the UK, and the government have announced they will apply for EU assistance. This means that flood-hit communities in Yorkshire could take a share of up to £125 million in EU aid to help them recover from the floods.

The anti-EU campaign group that goes by the name "Open Europe" has taken issue with what I wrote in my last blog on Frank Field’s lie about Britain losing its seat on the UN Security. On their blog, they claim that the proposed EU Reform Treaty "will all too quickly be followed by the EU taking Britain's seat at the UN Security Council", and they challenge me to reply on my blog.

Well, the answer can be found in their own blog. They justify Frank Field’s lie by claiming that in his piece he was merely "predicting that this will eventually happen, rather than saying that it will immediately happen". So, that’s all right then – indulge in wild speculation about imaginary future decisions and let people think that they are an inevitable consequence of the Reform Treaty! And don’t let on that such future decisions would, if ever mooted, require Britain’s agreement anyway.

This seems to be a common tactic among the anti-european campaigners. That, and a tendency to make people believe that a particular issue is somehow a radical new development when it isn’t. Take Frank Field again: "Sovereignty is to be transferred in the most fundamental way. Under the treaty the EU will assume a legal personality. As a consequence it will be the EU, and not member states, that will sign international agreements on foreign policy, defence, crime and judicial matters. The EU will begin to take on the appearance of a separate country in all but name." That will no doubt stir reader’s passions – unless they take the trouble to check the facts.

A quick check of Wikepedia will show that "Legal personality is given to any organization which is a subject of legal rights and duties". The EU obviously is. Indeed it is perfectly normal for international organisations, such as the World Health Organisation, to have legal personality. The legal personality of international organisations was recognised by the International Court of Justice in 1949 ( ICJ 174). The European Community itself has always had it.

But anti-European campaigners won't tell you that. No, they insinuate that legal personality is unique to states, that if the EU has legal personality it becomes a state, in place of its member states. Field’s wording, that "the EU, and not member states" will be able to sign international agreements will, presumably intentionally, make people think that member states, including Britain, will lose their right to sign international agreements. Nor will they point out that for the EU to sign up to an international agreement in the field of foreign affairs, it would require the approval of the governments of all EU countries in the Council of Ministers.

Similarly, coming back to the Security Council, Open Europe makes much of various alternative wordings that were suggested for the presentation of a common EU position, when there is one, by the EU’s representative. Again, they don’t mention that, for there to be a common position in the first place, Britain would have to have agreed to it.