BRITAIN AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
The United Kingdom’s decision to sign up to the Treaty of Rome and its successor treaties led – over a thirty-year period – to the biggest transfer of sovereignty in the history of the British state. As far as England was concerned, it was potentially the greatest transferral of authority since 1211, when a temporarily humiliated King John offered his kingdom to the pope.
The rationale for doing so was partly idealistic. The European Economic Community (the European Union after 1993) represented the coming together of countries whose long histories of periodic hostility had been the precursor to two devastating world wars. It was also practical. The period after 1945 witnessed a steady deterioration in Britain’s status as a global power. Hopes were raised that becoming a leading member of a new, greater entity could actually increase London’s international influence. There was also the reality that in the fifteen years since the EEC’s birth, its members’ economies and standards of living had improved far more rapidly than had Britain’s. In addition, some Conservatives who feared the anti-free-market policies of the left wing of the Labour Party believed that joining the tariff-free ‘Common Market’ would permanently clip the wings of native socialism, safeguarding the future of capitalism in Britain.
The government’s attitude towards European political integration shifted over time. Although Winston Churchill had initially welcomed it, he also summed up Britain’s relationship towards it as: ‘We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked, but not combined. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.’ In essence, European integration was necessarily a Franco-German project, devised by two Frenchmen, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman. Britain was not consulted when the Schuman Plan was devised for what became the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952 and chose not to participate in the talks that led to the signing of the EEC’s founding charter, the Treaty of Rome, by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in 1957. Harold Macmillan’s belated attempt to secure British membership was vetoed in 1963 by France’s president, Charles de Gaulle, who did so using arguments similar to Churchill’s assessment of Britain’s continental commitment.
The situation was radically altered by the election of the Conservative leader Edward Heath as prime minister in 1970. He not only saw EEC membership as a means to reverse Britain’s relative economic decline but approached the prospect with the zeal of the committed idealist. Whilst the Tory election manifesto had weighed the pros and cons of membership before promising merely ‘Our sole commitment is to negotiate; no more, no less’, few who knew Heath could have doubted he was determined to get a deal at almost any payable price. It was in this spirit that terms were agreed by June 1971. Divisions on the issue of joining the EEC crossed party boundaries, with opinion polls suggesting widespread scepticism among the electorate. Nevertheless, in October the House of Commons endorsed entry by 356 votes to 244. Upon this mandate, Heath signed the Treaty of Accession in Brussels on 22 January 1972. The treaty was made law by the European Communities Act in October. Membership took effect from 1 January 1973.
The debate was not so easily concluded. At issue was not just what Britain had signed up to, but what she might subsequently find herself committed to in an organization dedicated to ‘ever closer union’. Following the Heath government’s fall in February 1974, the incoming Labour administration of Harold Wilson tried to paper over its own divisions in 1975 by offering the British electorate a referendum on whether – after a cosmetic renegotiation of the terms – to remain within the EEC. In the midst of an economic crisis, Britain’s voters preferred by a ratio of two to one to stay in. The official ‘yes’ campaign pamphlet sent to every home stated that important decisions in Brussels ‘can be taken only if all the members of the Council agree. The minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against British interests.’ In reality, there were already plans to curtail the right to veto. By 1990, European judges were successfully striking down British Acts of Parliament.
Commemorative postage stamps marked Britain’s entry into the European Communities in 1973.
European competence over British law received its greatest boost in 1987 when the Single European Act – passed after only a desultory Commons debate – established the Single Market. This process, which was completed by 1992, secured the free movement of goods, services, money and people within the European Community (which had by then increased to twelve members) as well as introducing qualified majority voting procedures in related policy areas, thereby ending national vetoes. Generally welcomed by Britain’s major exporters, it also brought in its wake a vast extension of new regulation. For its promoter, Margaret Thatcher, it came to represent the high-water mark after which her faith in the European ‘project’ subsided. Conversely, Labour Party and trade union leaders warmed to its decisive legal influence over working practices and other social issues.
1957 The Treaty of Rome creates the European Economic Community (EEC), comprising France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. The ‘six’ also set up Euratom with the aspiration of framing a common nuclear energy policy.
1958 The European Court of Justice is established to interpret the Treaty of Rome’s provisions.
1960 The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is launched to cut tariffs between the UK, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Portugal while avoiding creating supranational institutions.
1961 The UK applies to join the EEC (the application is vetoed by France in 1963).
1967 The EEC, Euratom and the European Coal and Steel Community are brought together as the European Community (EC).
1968 The Common Market is completed, removing internal tariffs.
1973 Britain, Denmark and Ireland join the EC.
1975 British membership of the EC is upheld in a national referendum.
1979 The European Monetary System is established. Britain joins but does not commit sterling to the EMS’s Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The first direct elections to the European Parliament are held.
1981 Greece joins the EC.
1984 Margaret Thatcher secures a partial budget rebate of UK contributions to the EC.
1986 Spain and Portugal join the EC. The new European flag is unveiled (a circle of twelve gold stars on a blue background).
1987 The Single European Act enters into law, removing national vetoes across the market and instituting regulatory policies in order to create a ‘single market’.
1990 Britain pegs sterling within the ERM.
1992 The Maastricht Treaty is signed (it comes into effect in 1993), creating the European Union (EU) and committing members to establishing the single currency, the Euro. Britain retains the right to opt out of the Euro and Social Chapter policies. European citizenship is created.
1992 Sterling is withdrawn from the ERM.
1995 Austria, Sweden and Finland join the EU. A Norwegian referendum rejects membership. The Schengen Pact begins removing border controls between members (though the UK and Ireland do not join).
1997 Britain opts into Maastricht’s Social Chapter. The Amsterdam Treaty increases EU legal competence over asylum, immigration, and social and employment policies.
2002 The Euro replaces national currencies. The UK, Sweden and Denmark opt out.
2005 The EU expands to twenty-five members – bringing in Malta, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Referenda votes in France and the Netherlands reject an EU constitution.
2007 Romania and Bulgaria join the EU.
2009 The 2007 Lisbon Treaty becomes law, enforcing much of the (supposedly) defeated constitution proposals, further reducing national veto powers, strengthening the EU’s common foreign and diplomatic policies, giving legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and establishing permanent positions for the European president of the Council and the high representative for foreign affairs.
Mrs Thatcher’s successor as prime minister, John Major, signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which transferred further areas of law-making to Brussels. In particular, it established monetary union and a single currency, the Euro, for its members – a vast transferral of monetary and economic authority from which Britain and Denmark opted out. In 2007 the Lisbon Treaty was signed with the aim of creating what was effectively a constitution for a European Union that – with the collapse of communism – had spread to twenty-seven members and embraced nearly 500 million people. Measures to coordinate foreign policy were also devised, with an eventual goal that Europe might speak to the world with one voice. The structure of a federal superstate was clearly discernible, if not fully operational.
Supporters of deeper integration maintained that sovereignty was distinct from power and that membership of the European Union enhanced British power. Nevertheless, there remained a democratic deficit at the heart of the project which reduced voters to electing MPs who, over large areas of legislation, were no longer responsible for making the law.
EEC Accession Treaty, 1972
HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS,
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF DENMARK,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC,
THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE ITALIAN REPUBLIC,
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE GRAND DUKE OF LUXEMBOURG,
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF THE NETHERLANDS,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE PORTUGUESE REPUBLIC, HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND,
UNITED in their desire to pursue the attainment of the objectives of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community and the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community,
DETERMINED in the spirit of those Treaties to construct an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe on the foundations already laid,
CONSIDERING that Article 237 of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community and Article 205 of the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community afford European States the opportunity of becoming members of these Communities,
CONSIDERING that the Kingdom of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have applied to become members of these Communities,
CONSIDERING that the Council of the European Communities, after having obtained the Opinion of the Commission, has declared itself in favour of the admission of these States,
HAVE DECIDED to establish by common agreement the conditions of admission and the adjustments to be made to the Treaties establishing the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community and to this end have designated as their Plenipotentiaries:
The Right Honourable Edward Heath MBE MP,
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service;
The Right Honourable Sir Alec Douglas-Home KT MP,
Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs;
The Right Honourable Geoffrey Rippon QC MP,
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster;
Who, having exchanged their Full Powers found in good and due form, HAVE AGREED as follows:
1. The Kingdom of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland hereby become members of the European Economic Community and of the European Atomic Energy Community and parties to the Treaties establishing these Communities as amended or supplemented. . . .
ARTICLE 2
This Treaty will be ratified by the High Contracting Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. The instruments of ratification will be deposited with the Government of the Italian Republic by 31 December 1972 at the latest.
This Treaty will enter into force on 1 January 1973, provided that all the instruments of ratification have been deposited before that date and that all the instruments of accession to the European Coal and Steel Community are deposited on that date.…
ARTICLE 3
This Treaty, drawn up in a single original in the Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Irish and Italian languages, the Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Irish and Italian texts all being equally authentic, will be deposited in the archive of the Government of the Italian Republic, which will transmit a certified copy to each of the Governments of the other signatory States.
In witness whereof, the undersigned Plenipotentiaries have affixed their signatures below this Treaty.
Done at Brussels on this twenty-second day of January in the year one thousand nine hundred and seventy-two.
