EU Economic Integration: a Tool of the Political Gadgetry - Essay Example

EU Economic Integration: A Tool of the Political Gadgetry? Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression. Otto von Bismarck Introduction As Gifford (2008) writes, a fair amount of literature exploring party-based Euroscepticism in both the EU member-states and accession countries has recently emerged, with a key theme the influence of party politics within national political systems over the parties’ position on European integration. Not surprisingly, Britain, as a large and influential EU member-state, has received a considerable academic attention in regard to the issue. Britain’s thorny relationship with the European Union in particular has widely been recognised one of the dominant and most controversial issues of modern British politics in the last fifty years (Gamble, 1998). In their introduction to Britain For and Against Europe, Baker and Seawright point out that Britain has often been described as a reluctant European partner, whose decision to apply for membership was due to many factors, including the end of the Empire and elite growing perceptions of Britain’s relative economic weakness (1998). That, according to the authors, resulted in ‘project Europe’ being viewed by British politicians much more from national economic interest, rather than a strong commitment to the ideas of the founding Six of EEC (European Economic Community); although prominent ‘committed Europeans’, like Edward Heath and Roy Jenkins, are deemed to have held sincere beliefs in deeper integration that would promote mutual prosperity and prevent another disastrous war (Baker and Seawright, 1998). Not only did the debate about British membership move through a number of phases, namely Britain’s initial refusal to participate in the 1950s, the first application in the 1960s, the final entry negotiations in 1971, and the full membership in 1973, but also the main British political parties have repeatedly shifted their position on the European Union. The Conservatives appeared the pro-European party in the initial stage, while the majority of the Labour party was opposed to it, being more divided on this issue than the Conservatives in the 1970s; since the 1990s, however, the Labour have been seen as more pro-European, while the rising anti-European feeling within the Conservatives created a situation where its pro-European wing was struggling to keep control of policy towards Europe, amidst wide-spread speculations that Conservative divisions might eventually lead to a split (Gamble, 1998). Stances on the Single European Market The economic crisis of the 1970s not only kept the Labour party moving to the left, attempting to develop an alternative economic strategy that aimed for employment and welfare guaranteed via radical interventionist policies, but also considerably contributed to the rift between the leadership and the party’s rank and file on the issue of Britain’s European membership (Gamble, 1998). The main argument against the European Community was that its rules would hamper, if not prevent, the adoption of measures intended to revive the economy. As their implementation more or less implied withdrawal from Europe, the latter eventually became a Labour manifesto in 1983 (Gamble, 1998). Following the electoral defeat in 1983, the Labour abandoned their commitment to withdrawal from the European Community, which move is considered both a direct result of the failure of the alternative economic strategy and the stance of many trade unions towards European integration (Gamble, 1998). The motives behind Labour’s shift towards European integration, as stated by Gamble, namely the vision of European Community as a larger framework for pursuing social democratic objectives at national level – whether social or economic – more or less logically produced the opposite reaction within the Conservative Party; although all the Thatcherites have supported the vision of the European Community as a free trade area, the focal point of disagreement became the issue of how the single market to be achieved and maintained (Gamble, 1998). Even though Britain’s reputation of being intransigent towards greater integration with Europe is overwhelmingly connected with the Thatcher Governments, the most important move to intensification of the integration process – the Single European Act – received strong support from the then Conservative Government, precisely under Margaret Thatcher (George, 1990). This may look like a prima facie paradox, although it’s anything but surprise, given the Thatcherite programme targeted specifically at overcoming the political obstacles to the free market in the UK; since the creation of a real single market on European level implied supranational administrative and legal institutions which to ensure that the various local political obstacles in the member-states are being overcome (Gamble, 1998). The implications of the single market creation, however, have been the issue that divided the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative party, many of whom accepted the creation of single currency and the agencies necessary for its policing, along with the aforementioned supranational institutions, as natural corollary of the single market; which, in turn, was seen by many Conservative Party members, including Thatcher herself, as transfer of what they considered the core aspects of British national sovereignty (Gamble, 1998). Or to be precise, as Holmes points out (1996), the fear of possible loss of control by British Government over its authority to influence economic conditions in Britain, along with the likelihood of an economic policy determined at European level and a bit more interventionist, and social democratic than the Conservatives have been prepared to swallow, logically resulted in opposition to the proposal for economic and monetary union (Gamble, 1998). This double-edged issue found its two-edged solution – rather from European perspective, of course – with Thatcher’s key move towards giving absolute priority to national sovereignty over any supranational institutions, expressed in her famous 1988 Bruges speech, which, however, was presented not as an anti-European policy but as an alternative European one (Gamble, 1998; Thatcher, 1988). Thus, besides achieving the obvious aim of defending what then was seen as the best British national interest, Thatcher’s move is thought to have yielded significant internal political result – a formal split, similar to the 1981 one in the Labour party, which led to the creation of the Social Democrats, was avoided (Gamble, 1998). The Boiling Point Having once regarded themselves as the party of Europe – even during the ‘Thatcher time’, countenance to European membership was increasingly stronger amongst the Conservative supporters than within those of the main opposition parties – the Conservatives have gradually and somehow imperceptibly come to a situation where the issue of European integration convulsed the party causing a series of Cabinet ministers’ resignations, including that of Margaret Thatcher (Ludlam, 1998). Following the early 1990s, the burgeoning Euroscepticism amongst the Conservative backbenchers developed into a kind of rebellion against the Maastricht Treaty, due to the feeling that EC membership was no longer delivering the expected benefits (Forster, 2002). The dissent, over the Social Protocol in particular, is thought to have led to the most serious Conservative electoral defeat in the twentieth century followed by the minority government of John Major (Ludlam, 1998). The fractures within the Conservative party reappeared with Major’s move to expel eight Euro-rebels from the parliamentary group – the so-called ‘Gang of Eight’ including John Redwood, Jonathan Aitken, Norman Lamont (the three all ex-members of Major Cabinets) and John Biffen, which move, by the way, cost the Prime Minister an important budget vote loss; as well as with the 1995 challenge posed by Major to his critics, which eventually led to the emergence of another Eurosceptic think tank headed by John Redwood (Ludlam, 1998). Following the ‘Black Wednesday’ on September the sixteenth, 1992, the forced suspension of British currency’s membership of the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) produced a severe blow to one of the pillars of the government’s economic policy, not only igniting opposition to the Maastricht Treaty, but also damaging the government’s reputation for economic competence (Gamble, 1998). On the other hand, as Baker et al. explain (cited in Gamble, 1998), due to by-election losses and defections, the parliamentarian support for this Major’s Cabinet had been melting away and John Major himself was more or less obliged to adopt more or less a vacillating policy in order to keep the party factions together; not less interesting is the fact that his increasingly negative stance on the issue of European integration is mainly attributed to the growing strength and influence of anti-European opinion within the party and the Conservative media (1996). However, Major’s struggle to suppress the parliamentary divisions in the Conservative party clearly and definitely failed, as three vital thresholds, according to some authors, were being crossed one by one – cabinet division, parliamentary rebellion and defection to other parties (Baker et al. 1993b, as cited in Ludlam, 1998). According to Gamble, the process of European integration is neither irreversible nor irresistible per se, which means that national governments, or rather, the decisions made by them in line with their perceptions of national interest in the context of changing conditions in the world economy, could significantly alter or even predetermine that process (1998). Therefore, all the aforementioned frictions either in the Conservative or in Labour party, with a major source the question of European integration, are considered a two-way thing where certain trends and outcomes in Europe are used by each and every one of the opposing parties and factions for achieving their political objectives; and vice versa, particular domestic policy choices and electoral pressures are believed to exert their powerful influence on the process of European economic integration. Notable examples of such interrelation are presented in the following section. Political Lines, Motives and Policy Implications It is noteworthy that the political, administrative, business and media elites in the United Kingdom have usually supported Britain’s membership of European Community, with the media being more divided, insofar as the Conservative press have steadily become anti-European since the 1980s (Gamble, 1998). What Baker and Seawright (1998) define as official position of the Labour on Europe – in authors’ own words, zigzagging between continued membership and a desire to withdraw – could be not that hard to apply to national policy on this issue, conducted by both Labour and Conservatives; which comes up to confirm Mitchell’s view that Europe cuts across the traditional left-right divide, just as cuts across the nationalist aspirations in Scotland and Wales (1998). Mitchell presses even further his observations, stating that for either Scottish or Welsh pro-integration nationalists being part of a large European authority was less threatening to their identity than being part of a smaller, but more centralised British state (1998); therefore, those nationalists’ support for deepening integration policy is anything but illogical, or unexpected. As for the Conservative party, the question of further integration is thought to have caused lingering tension within its ranks (Ashford, 1980; Berrington, 1973). Starting with Macmillan and Heath, who launched high-profile and quite risky campaigns in order to secure Conservatives’ support for British entry – to the degree that Heath had to rely on rebel Labour MPs, the dispute within the party, being broadly based on issues of national sovereignty (at least on the surface), is deemed to have produced two camps with not that clear-cut demarcation line in between, since supporters of the single market were divided over monetary integration; as well as a near-split situation following Thatcher’s resignation in November 1990, and a real possibility of a Conservative party-led withdrawal from Europe in the late 1990s (Baker and Seawright, 1998). The unprecedented scale and intensity of the so-called Maastricht rebellion (Gorman, 1993) against John Major is not only thought to have reflected the widespread Euroscepticism of the Tory backbenchers, but also the multiple fractures and growing tensions in the party, which were presumably due to the more or less authoritarian manner of Thatcher rule and the subsequent lack of a firm hand under John Major. John Redwood’s frequent interventions, for example, on EU fishing quotas, the ‘beef crises’, etc., spurred open rebelliousness and resuscitated the possibility of withdrawal (Ludlam, 1998); as well as signalled their author’s intention to contend for the party leadership. Ludlam states that “it is hard to make out a convincing case” for the impact Conservative party’s Euro-divisions have had on Conservative government’s policy on European integration (1998, p.52). However, the author admitted that abandonment of the Exchange Rate Mechanism membership and the refusal to contemplate re-entry were at least exacerbated due to an enforced shift in party’s policy (Ludlam, 1998). On the other hand, the influence of Conservative divisions on British policy in Europe are seen as more significant in terms of their impact on the outcome of the 1997 general election, which explicitly showed that the Conservatives have never fully recovered from the loss of public confidence after the Black Wednesday (Pattie and Johnston, 1996, as cited in Ludlam and Smith, 1996). The initial Labour’s shift to a pro-European stance has been foreshadowed by changes in British trade unions’ attitudes towards Europe, with two significant developments that transformed trade union way of thinking on the integration issue – the strategic possibilities afforded by British membership of the European Community and the general re-orientation of the British left towards Europe-wide strategies for social progress (Rosamond, 1998). However, after the 1979 election, the party conference voted to withdraw from the European Community without referendum, which is thought to have provoked the subsequent Labour split in 1981 and the creation of SDP (Baker and Seawright, 1998). The theme of national sovereignty, mainly in terms of economic (financial) one, is seen as persistently dominant during the New Labour Cabinets under Tony Blair, who regarded the question of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) with a decent dose of cautiousness, struggling to balance the national economic interest and the possible benefits of European integration (Baker and Seawright, 1998). Having come to power with two clearly stated goals, namely to lead reform in the EU and hold a referendum on the single currency issue, the New Labour leadership became quite equivocal in regard to the question of a national referendum on single currency, as Bulmer points out, due to electoral considerations (2008). However, the Labour party is thought to have moved a considerable way along the road of European integration since 1983, which might just as well manifested itself in support for the Lisbon Strategy and two rounds of treaty reform – Amsterdam and Nice – concluded with no major isolation (Bulmer, 2008). Conclusion Given that the main British parliamentarian parties differ very little in their policy platform on European integration – Major and Blair, for instance – as well as in their prima facie motives for Euro-scepticism (since both Conservative and Labour parties appeared as if converged on the sovereignty issue, although the latter being divided into nation state-centred ‘Tory scepticism’ and ‘Labour scepticism’ based on the constraints imposed upon national economic management policies), attributing Britain’s official line of policy to pragmatic diplomacy, rather than to pursuit of immediate and far-reaching political objectives seems alluringly easy. The main parliamentarian parties, however, as mentioned above, have undergone a repeated change in attitude to European integration, which, on the one hand, is seen as a result of different perceptions and definitions of sovereignty and national interest, but on the other hand this issue is thought to have presented a platform where either intentionally or not surfaced questions of ideology, interest, and identity (Baker and Seawright, 1998); and at the same time causing, or encouraging political skirmishes, changes and realignments in parties, interest groups, and governments (Baker et al., 1993b). Thus, having arisen in the context of strategic choices made by British politics within the historical development of the British state, the European integration is deemed a kind of issue that divides parties due to its ability to fuse together issues of sovereignty and identity with political economy in both a novel and powerful way (Gamble, 1998). 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