Does Euroscepticism Have a Passport?
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DocCov 23-04-2004 11:23 Pagina 1 No.29, Winter 2004 Does Euroscepticism have a passport? Simon Usherwood Bruges as a Lodestone of British Opposition to the European Union Olof Petersson The debate about Europe in Sweden Jan Rovny Conceptualising Party-based Euroscepticism: Magnitude and Motivations Anne Sophie Coleman Transparency Trap: Anti-Dumping and the Pursuit of Closer Trade Cooperation within the EU and the WTO Ana Maria Dobre Europeanisation at Work: A Study of Regional Domestic Adaptation to the EU Collegium Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 1 Does Euroscepticism have a passport? www.coleurop.be Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 2 Editors Dr Marc Vuijlsteke, Chief Editor Anja Fiedler, Co-editor Pierpaolo Settembri, Co-editor Editing Board Members Jennifer Byron Nadia Elhaggagi Vicent Climent-Ferrando Jerome Glass Miguel Angel Medina Abellan Radhia Oudjani Nadine Thwaites Collegium Collegium is published quarterly by the academic assistants and students of the College of Europe. The views expressed in Collegium are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the College of Europe. Copyright remains with the authors. The co-editors would like to thank their predecessors Christine Reh and Christopher Reynolds for their dedication and creativity in their work for Collegium. Submissions to Collegium are welcomed. Manuscripts for consideration, in English or in French, should be sent in electronic format (Word) by email to: [email protected] or on diskette to: Collegium, College of Europe, Dijver 11, Brugge, B-8000, Belgium. Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 3 Collegium No.29, Winter 2004 Simon Usherwood Bruges as a Lodestone of British Opposition p. 5 to the European Union Olof Petersson The debate about Europe in Sweden p. 17 Jan Rovny Conceptualising Party-based Euroscepticism: Magnitude and Motivations p. 31 Anne Sophie Coleman Transparency Trap: Anti-Dumping and the Pursuit of Closer Trade Cooperation within the EU and the WTO p. 49 Ana Maria Dobre Europeanisation at Work: A Study of Regional Domestic Adaptation to the EU p. 79 Book Reviews p. 99 News From the College of Europe p. 111 Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 4 Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 5 Collegium, No. 29, Winter 2004 Bruges as a Lodestone of British Opposition to the European Union Simon Usherwood1 Abstract Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech of 1988 can be considered as a key building block in the development of British opposition to the European Union. As the first clear break by a European leader from the ‘europhoria’ of the late 1980s, it was to prove a vital catalyst in the mobilisation and organisation of previously disparate elements, most obviously in the form of the Bruges Group. In the longer term, the speech has continued to have a high level of relevance for many anti-EU groups. Moreover, it will also be argued that the ideas that lie behind the speech have become increasingly accepted as part of the pattern of European integration over the past 15 years. 1. Introduction In many ways, ‘Bruges’ is a word that is just as value-laden as ‘Brussels’. Just as the latter is often held out as the physical (and usually pejorative) expression of European integration, so the former symbolises British resistance to that inte- gration. And yet, unlike ‘Brussels’ – that vague and opaque term – ‘Bruges’ is very precise, referring to Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the College of Europe on 20th September 1988. In a broader context, the speech probably only com- petes with the Danish ‘no’ vote to the Maastricht Treaty and the Danish and Swedish ‘no’ votes to the euro as the most prominent expression of opposition to the European project, as embodied in the European Union. 1 Simon Usherwood is a Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Surrey and an ancien of the College of Europe (Promotion Alexis de Tocqueville). 5 Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 6 Leaving aside the irony of the College of Europe coming to be associated in pop- ular discourse with a seeming rejection of its raison d’être, this paper aims to suggest that Thatcher’s speech was important not only in terms of the immedi- ate impact it had, but also in the longer term. After a brief discussion of the speech’s contents and general political impact across Europe, the focus will shift to its importance in kick-starting the mobilisation and formation of organised opposition groups in the UK and beyond, particularly through the role of the self-styled Bruges Group. The Group was amongst the very first of the current wave of anti-EU groups that sprang up in the late 1980s and 1990s, and its rela- tionship to other groups in the UK will be discussed, as will the continued use of the Bruges speech as a point of reference. Finally, the focus will move back out again, in order to better consider the idea that Thatcher’s greatest legacy was not the generation of a substantial body of organised opposition, but rather the expression of a set of ideas that have practically informed the development of the European Union since its birth at Maastricht. 2. The Speech The decision to invite Margaret Thatcher to Bruges was always going to be con- tentious. As she herself remarked, ‘it must seem rather like inviting Genghis Khan to speak on the virtues of peaceful co-existence!’2. This was particularly true at this time, since Jacques Delors, then President of the Commission, had made several speeches highlighting the importance of Community decisions in many areas of public policy and the need for further integration in social policy. Thus piqued, Thatcher set out to promote her new European policy, one that stressed the development of intergovernmental and neo-liberal elements and one that was less tolerant of the centralising tendencies that had sprung up in the wake of the Single European Act. After an introduction that qualified the EC as ‘one manifestation of [..] European identity’, so challenging Delors’ claim to a monopoly on its position, she noted that the Community was a practical means to ensure ‘prosperity and security’, rather than ‘an end in itself’. Thatcher then laid out her policy in the form of a set of guiding principles. Firstly, the EC had to develop through ‘willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states’ rather than through centralisation to a bureaucracy. As she noted: ‘We have not successfully rolled 2 All direct citations in this section are from the text and are to be found in M. Thatcher, 1998, ‘Bruges Revisited’, Bruges Group Paper No.34, at: http://www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/index.live?article=92. 6 Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 7 back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.’ Secondly, Community policies had to have a practical effect on the problems they addressed. In this regard, Thatcher’s attention was clearly directed towards (the then log jammed) reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and of finan- cial control more generally. The third principle, on the need for Community poli- cies to encourage enterprise, was similarly focused on Delors’ comments and on questioning the need for a single currency. At the same time, Thatcher offered the most detailed set of ‘practical steps’ in this section, covering a wide variety of policy areas, from financial liberalisation to air transport to the European Company Statute, an indication of the breadth of British interests in this field. The fourth and fifth principles turned outwards, befitting Thatcher’s concern that the EC was overly introverted. She began by repeating the need to avoid protectionism, both within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and in dealings with lesser-developed countries. In this, there was also a desire to reinforce the internal liberalisation programme that she had just mentioned. The final principle concerned the need to maintain NATO as the basis of any defence architecture in Europe. The West European Union (WEU) was to be a reinforcement of, rather than a replacement for, NATO, permitting the Member States to ‘shoulder a fair share of the burden’ of providing security. The response to the speech was generally critical, especially outside the UK. Italy’s La Stampa described Thatcher as ‘an elephant in the china shop of Europe’, while the Dutch De Volkskrant felt the speech had caused ‘more dam- age to the idea of a unified Europe than hurricane Gilbert did to property in Jamaica’.3 Several commentators particularly referred to the tone of the speech: for example, one Commission official remarked, ‘Not all of what she says is objectionable. It’s the way she says it’.4 The Economist noted that the most upset group were federalists who believed in a United States of Europe, of whom many were to be found at the College of Europe, ‘a den of federalism if ever there was one’.5 Beyond this, the paper pointed to the ‘Delors camp’ (support- 3 Cited in ‘Gaullist jibes fly thick and fast’, Times, 25 September 1988, and ‘Press challenges view of continent from No.10’, Times, 23 September 1988, respectively. 4 Cited in ‘Scornful European look of signs of Thatcher realism’, Times, 23 September 1988. 5 ‘Just one big open family’, Economist, 24 September 1988. D. Dinan, Ever Closer Union: An Introduction to European Integration, 2nd ed.(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999) similarly calls the College a ‘citadel of Eurofederalism’ (p.129). 7 Collegium29 23-04-2004 11:11 Pagina 8 ers of a strong European centre) and the ‘something-for-everybody’ school (who felt the give and take of integration was generally positive for a country) as sec- ondary sources of discontent, together forming a substantial block of opinion.