The Conservatives will probably take power in the UK this spring and their ‘comeback’ will mark a political change not only in the UK, but also throughout the continent. The Tories’ lukewarm attitude to the European Union is well known and most of the present Conservatives are even more Eurosceptic than their predecessors under Thatcher and Major. At the same time, the global political and economic situation makes Britain more and more involved in the process of European integration. David Cameron will need to reconcile these two contradictions if he is to govern effectively. Is he skilful enough to do it?
Obviously, the present institutional shape of the European Union is not perfect but, precisely for this reason, it needs the pragmatic voice of Britain. During the new Spanish presidency the EU will try to replace the old ‘Lisbon agenda’ of economic reform with a new economic programme, the so-called ‘Europe 2020’. With a fresh memory of the economic crisis, the majority of the European governments are focused on boosting demand in their economies. For its own good, as well as for the good of the European community, the UK should turn ‘Europe 2020’ into a more pragmatic programme with objectives such as reforming the Common and Agricultural Policy (CAP), developing the European energy grid, or adopting social policies focused on raising employment and productivity and fighting underperforming education systems. The pragmatism will also be necessary to increase military cooperation within the EU. The British may sneer at the military deficiencies of more than half the EU member states. However, as argued by Lord Robertson and Lord Ashdown in a report prepared for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), the UK can no longer afford to maintain a full spectrum of military capabilities and should pool resources with some of the more capable EU members.
Will David Cameron’s government be able to achieve at least some of these goals? He has already proved susceptible to the Tories’ growing Euroscepticism by deciding to disengage the Conservatives form the centre-right European Peoples’ Party (EPP). The breach of cooperation with the leading force in the European Parliament has marginalised to some extent the British representation in the EU. If Cameron takes his extreme anti-European Party colleagues’ advice and insists on a renegotiation of the Lisbon treaty (hardly anyone in the EU wants to restart the process that took almost ten years) or blocks the vote in the EU Council (as Major did in 1996), he will achieve nothing but further alienation of the UK in Europe.
Andrzej is a Polish student studying in France. He interned with the Welsh Liberal Democrats last summer. This is one of a series of ‘Letters from Strasbourg’ in which Andrzej discusses personal views from the European mainland.
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