Douglas Carswell's Blog

New EU economy rules - does the small print apply to Britain?

Back in June, David Cameron attended his first Euro-summit and agreed to let EU quangos take over regulation of the City of London.  In return, we were told, our government had achieved a great victory.  Britain, we were assured, would be exempted from any proposals requiring member states to have their budgets vetted by Brussels.

Hummmm .....

If you read the European Commission document 11807/10, however, it doesn’t seem quite so clear cut. Studying it, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new rules on fiscal oversight are going to apply to all EU Member States, not just members of the Euro.  

The paper – subtitled “Tools for stronger EU economic governance” – focuses on how Member States, not just Euro countries, “will act in compliance with the EU framework.” The “new structured mechanism” for vetting each countries budget will be applied to “all Member States”.  

In or out of the Euro, the paper suggests Britain may indeed have her budget subject to EU Commission vetting – albeit that the time table for this “semester” process might allow officials to claim that the Commons gets to see it first.      

And what if Brussels did not approve of the tax and spend policies of our democratically elected government? 

If such rules only apply to Eurozone countries, why does page 5 of the document, under the heading “Corrective Action”, say that “This mechanism would apply to all Member States”.  Use of that word “all”, again. If there’s a caveat saying “all” excludes Britain, I couldn’t find it.

What I did manage to find was a motion on the House of Commons Order Paper this morning tabled by the government appearing to welcome these proposals.

Perhaps there’s an easy enough explanation? I’ve written to the Minister who tabled the motion, Mark Hoban, asking if he can provide specific clarification and a copy of the actually text that shows these new rules do not involve the UK. 

Meanwhile, I think it’s fair to say that the document currently before the Commons doesn’t seem to say what ministers say that it says.

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