Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Europ-Assistance 25th Anniversary Dinner ("Europe: Quo Vadis?")

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Milan
Source: Thatcher Archive: speaking text
Editorial comments: Evening.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 2985
Themes: Civil liberties, Public spending & borrowing, Trade, European Union (general), European Union Budget, Economic, monetary & political union, Foreign policy - theory and process, Foreign policy (Asia), Foreign policy (Central & Eastern Europe), Foreign policy (USA), Law & order, Religion & morality

Introduction

I am glad that your organisation—Europ:Assistance—exists. Because never has Europ needed Assistance more than now.

I propose to tell you first what I think is wrong with the present European Community, and second what needs to be done. I doubt that I shall be diplomatic: I very rarely am. But some direct and harsh things need to be said if ever we are to get Europe back on the right course. Let me give you a word of advice. When dealing with politicians, don't be taken in by their rhetoric: look at what they actually do or maybe don't. That is the real test. [end p1]

Europe's Problems

There are three fundamental problems with Europe at present.

First, we are losing the sense of moral conviction which should be the sure foundation of democratic politics.

Second, there is no idealism.

And third, there is no leadership in international affairs. [end p2]

Politics and Moral Conviction

I shall start with that moral conviction. Democracy means respect for individual rights, respect for a rule of law without which freedom cannot exist, and accountability of elected representatives to the people. You cannot have one of these things without the others. Yet we are neglecting all three. In much of Europe there is less respect for the law, although the magistrates in Italy who are enforcing it with such courage against the mafia and against corruption are doing a great service to restoring confidence in the rule of law. [end p3]

The rule of law or justice is not an abstract concept. It is a vital part of daily life. It is based on equity and fairness. It must be independently adjudicated in each of our nation states. Part of the problem in the Community Courts is that the law is seen not as impartial—which it should be—but as ideologically committed to the political goal of closer integration. And when you have that sort of law, you do not necessarily have justice. Indeed it is significant that only three of the present Euro Court judges have had judicial experience in their national courts. [end p4]

Nor is the law in tune with the beliefs of the people. Indeed it overrides their own law and customs. The Maastricht Treaty makes matters worse, because it increases majority voting. The longer that goes on, the more we are storing up trouble and resentment for the future.

Just as worrying is the steady tramp, tramp, tramp of the feet of bureaucracy over the rights of the individual. The ancient civilisations—Egypt, China, India, Mesopotamia, Babylon—did not bother much with individual rights—even in Greece and Rome the rights were limited to the few. Respect for individual rights only came later with Judaism and Christianity. [end p5]

Indeed it was the Emperor Constantine 's Edict of Milan in 313 which made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. The history of Britain's Parliament and the rise of democracy was the story of steady extension of power from the King, first to the barons under our Magna Carta of 1215, then to the broad middle classes, and finally to all citizens. It was in 1688, in what we call the Glorious Revolution, that Parliament became the Supreme Authority. Even today, the reason why we require obedience to our laws is either because they have been consecrated by custom, or passed by the elected representatives of the people. [end p6]

In the new Europe of Maastricht, this reason no longer holds and no other sufficient reason is put in its place. Our Members of Parliament cease to be accountable to their own electorate and are left saying to them “We've passed your rights over to Brussels” . At the same time, the Maastricht Treaty increases from eleven to twenty, those areas of government over which the Commission has the monopoly right to put forward legislation.

We are witnessing the rise of the New Maastricht Empire whose bureaucratic capital at Brussels spreads its regulatory tentacles and legal powers throughout Europe. [end p7]

To adapt the words of Lord Acton's famous phrase “all bureaucracy tends to corrupt and absolute bureaucracy corrupts absolutely” . Indeed it literally corrupts, because it encourages fraud on a frightening scale as in the Common Agricultural Policy.

The result of our neglect of the moral basis of our democracy is very clear to see. Europe is the most institutionalised of continents, yet its institutions are held in ever deminishing regard. Instead, everywhere you find disenchantment and discontent with governments and politicians, and with an interfering bureaucracy in Brussels. [end p8]

Politicians are more and more out of touch with what people think and what they want: and more and more arrogant in believing that they, the politicians know best. There is no better example than the way in which the Danish people have been forced to hold a second referendum, because the first one did not produce the right answer.

And there is a moral aspect or lack of it to the massive deficits run up by national governments. Those deficits mean that we are spending now sums of money which our children and grandchildren will have to repay. [end p9]

Hardly an example of high moral tone and yet the Commission is constantly demanding more money from the nation states. Britain's net contribution this year is £2.6 billion.

Nor is there anything moral about some countries voting for Maastricht because it offers them bigger handouts paid for by the rest of us.

Our democracies are afflicted by a moral palsy, one which condones what Theodore Roosevelt described as “ignoble ease” , which he contrasted with the doctrine of the strenuous life. [end p10]

He reminded us that the highest form of success comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil and who, out of these, wins the splendid ultimate triumph. The Muslims of Bosnia may well ask what ever happened to the moral ascendency of the West.

Where have the ideals gone?

Second, where have our ideals gone? They too are being stifled by bureaucracy and lack of vision. The European Community was founded on a vision: the free and willing cooperation of Europe's nation states, within which the reconciliation of France and Germany could take place. [end p11]

Co-operation in which each country could feel secure in its own national identity and safe from attack from without because of the NATO Alliance.

But that ideal has been distorted. In the Community we are trying to force countries into an artificial mould in which they are asked to sacrifice their nationhood, their traditions, their laws and their Parliamentary customs. Surely one thing we have learned from the years since the end of the Cold War is that groups which have been put together artificially simply fall apart because they don't belong together. [end p12]

You see it in the end of empire—the German Empire, the Habsburg Empire, the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Ottoman and British Empires. You see it in the disintegrating remnants of what used to be the Communist Soviet Union. You see it in Yugoslavia. Nations are like human beings: they need self-esteem and room to be themselves.

Instead of outward-looking ideals, Europe's vision is increasingly looking inwards. The economic vision is interventionist, the social vision is that of universal social welfare piling up costs on industry making it non-competitive. [end p13]

Instead of free trade there is creeping protectionism; instead of help to the new democracies of Eastern Europe, they are held at arm's length and prevented from earning their living through freer trade with us. And in the face of external crises, instead of boldness and resolve, there is indecision and confusion.

We have to restore idealism to the European Community. That means recognising the strength of our history and traditions, giving primacy to democracy and the rule of law, tending our historic alliances, above all with the United States to whom we owe so much, and understanding that Europe will never flourish as a fortress locked within the western peninsula of our continent. [end p14]

It must look outwards and play a role in the world, the role from which it flinches now. Britain and Italy should never be thought of as mere unconsidered provinces of a bureaucratic empire in Brussels but as two of the greatest and proudest nations in Europe, rich in history, achievement and talent, and each with its own contribution to make.

The need for leadership

All that requires leadership, and that is my third point. The end of the Cold War has not produced a new world order, but a new world disorder. [end p15]

History has taught us time and again that democracies which dither cannot defend freedom, and never has that lesson been clearer than over Bosnia, your near neighbour.

Rather than take action, Europe's role seems to be to hinder and even to prevent effective action to stop the killing. How European governments square that with their consciences is beyond my comprehension unless they no longer have a conscience. [end p16]

The Way Forward

Let us now look at the way forward because those are the challenges which face Europe, and Maastricht is not the answer. It is a throw-back to the sort of thinking which prevailed 40 years ago when the European Community was first born: a time when the dominant view in Europe had the state involved in almost everything, with all decisions highly centralised.

It simply will not work now. Look at the evidence. People are no longer prepared to put up with so much interference by governments. They do not want every aspect of their lives to be tormented by regulations which stifle enterprise and terminate age old practices and customs. [end p17]

Economic and monetary union of all twelve member states with a single central bank and a Single Currency will certainly not happen in accordance with the Maastricht timetable and probably will not happen at all, because it is simply not realistic in a Europe of differing growth rates and differing living standards.

Our governments have to draw the right conclusions from the end of the Cold War, in other words the manifest failure of socialism. We have to work for a different sort of Europe to the one envisaged in Maastricht, and that will be the case even if Maastricht is finally ratified and survives constitutional challenge in the courts. [end p18]

First, the economy. We need a competitive, enterprising, lightly-regulated, open, low cost, low tax Europe: a Europe with a liberal economy and a limited state. That is the sort of Europe which will prosper and attract investment from overseas. That involves withdrawing many of the present regulations.

Second, trade. There are too many influences in Europe which want to see Europe erect barriers to trade against the outside world and have no wish to see the GATT round of world trade negotiations succeed. [end p19]

I remember well that the last European Council which I attended as Prime Minister was in October 1990 in Rome and I could not even get the GATT issue on to the agenda, although by that time its successful conclusion was urgent. Two and a half years later, through several extensions of time, the Uraguay Round has still not been agreed.

Large trading blocks are hampering free trade. They induce the formation of rival blocks constructing a set of arrangements for the richer countries careless of the needs of third world countries who need to earn their living by agricultural exports and the East European countries, all of whom need trade as much as aid. [end p20]

Economically, free trade is the truest form of international co-operation enabling people from all five continents every day to contribute to the manufacture and distribution of goods across an international network. Companies in small countries can compete just as well as those in large ones. Trading blocks are a barrier to true international co-operation.

Free trade is a discipline on Governments, it drives them to have less tax and less regulation—in other words it is a bulwark to liberty and opportunity. [end p21]

The Community must be open to trade with the rest of the world, because that has been the foundation of our prosperity for the past five decades. You will not find most businessmen wanting a protectionist Europe, it's the politicians and the bureaucrats who want it because protectionism gives them more power.

Third—The Asia Pacific Region. The other great force at work in the world—and perhaps Europe's greatest challenge—is the inexorable rise of the economic power of the Asia-Pacific region, more and more of whose countries are embracing democracy. By the end of the decade the trade within the Asia/Pacific region will exceed that within the European Community. [end p22]

That and the North American Free Trade Area—especially if it expands to include South America—are where future prosperity will be concentrated, unless Europe can break out of its present inertia. So long as we go on increasing the burden on Europe's businesses and loading them down with the paraphernalia of the Social Chapter, Europe will never be able to compete, and the Asia-Pacific region will become the world leader in trade and finance.

And you know the reason for the success of the Asia-Pacific countries? [end p23]

They have no doctrine of economic convergence, no common currency, no harmonisation, far fewer subsidies, no pointless interference, they are allergic to bureaucracy and over-regulation. Their performance refutes every false economic theory enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty—and they have the key to future prosperity.

Fourth, enlargement. We have a duty to sustain democracy and free economies in Eastern Europe, just as we did in earlier times towards Greece and Spain and Portugal. It will be expensive and it will involve concessions on trade. [end p24]

But the cost of failing to help will be much higher still, because the people of Eastern Europe will vote with their feet and arrive in vast numbers. We are already seeing that with the former Yugoslavia as you have reason to know here in Italy.

The best contribution which we can make to stability in Eastern Europe is to stop building just a privileged club in Western Europe and concentrate instead on a larger edifice which can house all Europe's nations. It will have to be looser in structure, less centralised and impose fewer obligations on its members. [end p25]

But it is vital. Building Europe in the West will be worthless if some of the countries of the East slip back into Communism or degenerate into anarchy.

Fifth, the politics. I believe passionately that Europe's future lies in free and willing co-operation between member countries of the Community, bound together by a single market, by the common policies which already exist and above all by common ties of friendship. Each country will keep its sovereign parliament, its own currency unless like Belgium and Luxembourg, or the Guilder and Deutschmark, they have local or trading reasons to come together. [end p26]

The Twelve can concentrate on those things which they think are better and more effectively done together than alone. There is nothing anti-European in such a vision: just because you are opposed to the ambitions and hunger for power of the Commission does not mean that you are somehow against the Europe of Mozart, Burke, Voltaire and Michelangelo.

It means that you believe in a different sort of Community and one which has a much better chance of ensuring Europe's liberty and greatness into the next century. [end p27]

Sixth, foreign policy. Of course the different countries should consult and keep each other informed, and work together where they can. But it is useless to try to compel them to adopt common policies, because that way you end up paralysing the action which is needed. There are always some people or countries who find a reason for doing nothing. Their interests and their willingness to commit forces are too divergent, as we saw over the Gulf War and as we are seeing now with Bosnia. They even refuse the Muslims the means to defend themselves—and self defence is a right far older than the UN Charter. [end p28]

There must be no truck either with the anti-Americanism which has too often been part of the thinking of some European governments—too often anti-Americanism has been regarded as the touchstone of loyalty to Europe. America will remain the greatest nation on earth and the greatest champion of freedom, although increasingly it will want other wealthy countries to share its burdens. Europe and America must always work together to shape the world's future. [end p29]

Without a common sense of purpose between Europe and America we shall be left with a nightmare world where nation states jockey for individual advantage, where the strong assert their interests and the weak cower, an intolerant world of bluster and platitudes in which we are all busy with our own pursuits and indifferent to the fate of others. If we are to avoid this, the Community must replace its narrow European-ness with truly global thinking. It must replace its selfish complacency with a sense of obligation towards its near neighbours. [end p30]

Conclusion

So my answer to quo vadis is that we need a different European Community, one which turns its attention away from vain institution-building and concentrates on open markets and free trade, on reducing bureaucracy and regulation, on creating security for the new democracies of Eastern and Central Europe on keeping the links with the United States, and on building a role for Europe in the world which matches its long history and its talents. Every country will be part of the Single Market, but not every initiative need involve every country. Some will want, for example, to join an exclusive money club with a single currency, others will find that needlessly constraining. [end p31]

The test of a common policy will not be whether it conforms to the ideological goal of a federal (or centralised) Europe but whether it works in practice and whether the people of each European country want it. In short, not a super-state but a club of nations with a broad common purpose and an active role in the world.

The alternative? Consensus among the Twelve paralyses leadership and prevents action that is needed. Already, the Community is being side-lined as America's and Russia's leaders get together. We cannot complain. We deserve no better. We have failed the innocent. [end p32]

That is the consequence of the present day Europe, clamped in the vice of Maastricht machinations. We have forgotten the lessons of this century—just when we should heed them most.

I believe the instinct of the people is better and more courageous than the empty words of politicians. It could and should have been so different.