Response to - EU referendum lies – it takes two to tango: The TUC was ever bound to launch an attack on Cameron’s hokey cokey policy on Europe – right back to Ted Heath and Thatcher’s campaign for integration the first splits became apparent in Tory policy towards Europe with Thatcher (possibly rightly) demanding some return of sovereign governance well before her time as leader of the party.
Back then we had a handful of central European countries in an effective trade partnership. Later developments, and new ascensions into Europe, were still positive in particular the extension throughout Europe of employment rights, that would not have seen the light of day under a domestic conservative administration.
However Milne’s excellent Guardian piece highlights where the real debate now lies. Europe is now a different animal. Without getting into the territorial arguments as to who should be labelled as truly ‘European’ and the often vicious attacks on Eastern European communities, under the guise of British sovereignty, we now face a Europe where the dynamics of the numbers of countries who are net contributors compared to net benefactors has changed beyond recognition. With that new dynamic comes rich pickings from under-developed economies.
Much of the EU public procurement legislation has been recently re-shaped to reflect the new era. Milne points to the Treaty of Rome – at the heart of the Treaty was in fact noble ambitions of fairness, transparency and open trading amongst European partners on a ‘cooperative’ basis – spreading the trade and therefore the wealth. Latterly however the tentacles of European public procurement law have started to work in favour of big business.
The competitive dialogue process, introduced under the Public Procurement Directive, de facto removes transparency by allowing ‘discussions’ between bidders and the contracting body on projects – a neat but lawful way of carving up the spoils. There is no hint of ‘open and transparent’ tendering processes based on facts of price, quality and ultimate service delivery outcomes getting in the way of this process, heavily lobbied for by big business.
State Aid laws -which originally set out to protect European states from corrupt practices, that could undermine co-operation and inter-European trade, have been used instead to hinder interventionist policies to stabilise industry and save jobs during the recession. Britain to its credit argued for emergency changes to enable greater intervention by individual States.
The Lisbon Treaty is not just about hives offs and sell offs – in its original form the Lisbon agreement cloaked some laudable aims of bringing up European productivity, particularly in sub-regional economies, including some of the UK’s poorest areas. This was to enable European competitiveness gains to counteract the emerging Asia and China economies – a real danger that is growing and is a threat to European future economic growth.
However the quid quo pro for the new ascension countries, the net benefactors, has been to open up these new markets, with low labour costs and future revenue streams from transport, health and other public sector infrastructure projects to ensure a healthy return for big business for the price of their initial low-cost capital investment.
The price we now pay for a Europe of some 27 countries from a vision that started off with just a handful is a simple trade off. The richer central European countries want a return on their net contributions. That return is open season on the newer European ( net benefactor) economies and that means Lisbon, by whatever means necessary, would always be forced through. Whether Cameron has one leg in or one leg out of Europe matters little.
Free markets just got bigger and it’s an express train that an old Etonian can’t and wouldn’t want to stop.
Anna Rose
