 I thank you to the UK Parliament Open Lecture series for inviting me to talk to you, and also thank you to the European Parliament office, which is also represented here. I'm sure you all know, but this year marks 40 years of the European Union and Britain's membership of the EU. We first joined in 1973, so it's a significant anniversary, and one that I'm pleased to be able to give this talk on, Felly, mae erioed wedi atlent cwm wedi'i gofyn â'r UK. Mae nad oedd yn meddwl i gweithio gynnwys..., mae nad oedd yn meddwl i'n mewn cyddiad ymwyllt gan eurachau, mae nid oedd yn cofio'r pro熱fau. Mae gennym��ionalau, a dw i'r Llekwm Be Awlodau, famu Llenchwyddo, mae'r unrhywion yw'r unrhywion efo'r eu ddechrau a'r unrhywion yn ymdannu'n eu ddechrau. Mae'n ddweud bod yn unrhywion o'i ddweud o'r unrhywion ddweud, a rydyn ni'n ddweud iddyn nhw'n ddweud o'n ddweud o'r unionu efo efo eu ddweud o'r unionu europei. Mae'r unrhywion yn cael ei ddweud i gael eich beth, ar y syniadwch gynnig hefyd oedd, a'r unrhywion yn cael eich beth, a 13 yr yw yw 2000. Mae'r ddigon i gyd wedi'u i gyd yn unrhyw iawn yn bwysig, ac mae'n ddod yn rhan o'r ffordd, ond nid oedd amgylchedd y cyflawn ar y cyfrannu a bydd y dyfodol yn cyflawn ar beth mae'n ddysgrifennu'r hun, ond oedd yw'r cyfrannu arall yn cyfrannu. Ond byddwn yn y cerdd, yn y chyfrannu'r llangwadau yn y cyfrannu, fel y bydd yn y cyfrannu, ond mae'n gyd yn cyfrannu brydol yw'r bwysig yma fel o fewni cyfnod o bwysig mor busr, yn gweinio'r digonid, o'i gweinio'r pwysig ac yn cydweithio'r gweinio'r gweinio. Felly mae'n таr ar dwi'n mynd i fi ffrifwyr. Mae'n ddod o'r bwysig yma, a wedi sach yng Nghymru felly yw eonsi yma yn yn fan mwy gwyllfa. Mae ar y cyfrifol 27 oes. Mae 23 rhan o yng Nghymru, dwi'n cyfnod Amol gallwn mynd i'r cyfrannu gwyd-igol, yn ganos weld yn biasio i gael gyrfa'n gydrygiadau o'i cyfrannu ei wneud. Mae ein bod ydydd gan y gweithio y Llefi ydych chi'n ddysgu, ac efallai yn y gweithio ystod y ddiw yn gweithio. Mae oedd yn ni wedi'u gweld bod yna'r ystod fel ystod yn ddiw yn gweithio ystod, a mae wedi gweithio'r ystod y ledes ystod oedd sefydliadol yn gallu gwirionedd. ac ond y cyfraseid wedi'i frydydd i'r ystyried yn ddod. Ond y yw'r yw'r yw yn ymwysig ar y cwrs. Mynd i'n mynd i'n ymdangos o'r cyfraseid o'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r cyfraseid yn cyflawniaeth ar y cyfraseid a union europei. the European economy is not doing to well either. We have had a double dipp recession in which the Euro has avoided. So we are in the midst of a global economic crisis and I think we should remember that when we talk about the Euro. I think it is unfortunate in this country when we have media news press reports on Europe Mae'r meddlidau sy'n cyfryd o'r eu rai. Mae'n dweud o'n dweud. Mae'n dweud o'r meddlidau yn gofyn, ac mae'n dweud o'r meddlidau. Mae'n dweud o'r meddlidau yn gofyn yn unig yng Nghymru ac ynghylch yn parlymen. A'u ddweud o'r pethau tynnu ar y penerau is put the other side of the case. The positive case, no one would say at all that everything in the EU is perfect and we don't need to change anything. No institution anywhere can claim that and I would be one of the first people to point out that there are things which need changing and I think everybody in the pro-European camp would agree with that. But what we don't hear enough of is the advantages, the positive things about the EU and I'm hoping that you will go away with a slightly better understanding, at least as good understanding as I can give you of the way that we in the European Parliament see it and the good sides of the EU. I must say though, before I start that in any great detail, that the EU is not and has no pretensions to ever be a super state. It's something that we hear a lot in this country that oh the EU is taking over everything, it's going to somehow or other become this massive United States of Europe. That is not the intention that's never been what the EU was set up to do and we are absolutely not on that route. The EU has a very clear set of competencies which it carries out and it's delineated clearly and the principle of subsidiarity which I'm sure you all know is that member states devolve power down to the lowest possible level and decisions are taken at the lowest possible level is very strong indeed. So we are not an EU super state and we're not going anywhere near that. I will also say at the beginning that those who call for a referendum on EU membership at the moment certainly really don't I think understand the full implications of such a referendum. We have been as I said at the beginning in the EU for 40 years. That is a whole generation and I suspect a lot of you weren't even born in 1973 when Britain joined the EU. So it's a lot of history, it's a lot of shared values, it's a lot of shared legislation and it would take an enormous amount of unpicking. Not to mention the economic instability and the difficulties that may be caused by any attempt or any thoughts even of withdrawing from the EU. As far as I'm concerned it's an absolute non-starter and I think it's clear that that is now, that's my position and I wanted to make that clear to you before I started because that's very much where I'm coming from, the Labour MPs are coming from. But what I really want to talk to you about today is the EU itself in more detail both the history in the background and what is going on at the moment and a bit about what I do there and my own experiences of working in the parliament. So I want to cover why and how the EU was set up, what the EU stands for, certain milestones in the history of the EU, how the institutions work, what the EU has achieved and benefits of EU membership, some of the current issues that we're facing and what the future might be. The EU, as I'm sure you all know, was created at the end of the Second World War out of the ruins of Europe and the real collapse of Europe at the end of the Second World War when certain leaders of certain main countries came together and decided that they wanted to deal with this once and for all. And I think it was actually a very positive step not only to build and recreate from the ruins of Europe but also I think what the EU did at that time was represent a new humanitarianism after the awful happenings of the Second World War. You see emerging in Europe at the time and continuing much more of a respect for life, which is why the EU has, as some of its fundamental principles, equality and respect for individuals, gender equality, anti-racism and all of that came out of the horrors of the Second World War. It was also set up to combat nationalism, which obviously was a major factor in the causes and the duration of the Second World War and had been in the First World War when then and before the response to trade difficulties and disputes and territorial disputes was actually to go to war. And that had always been the history of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire so we're talking for very, very, very long time. And the EU sought to overcome those negative attitudes and to build something much more positive in its place. Of course there was also communism and I would be wrong if I claimed the EU was completely idealistic because it wasn't. And part of the founding of the EU was to be at bulwark against the communist countries to the east and also of course importantly to provide a European voice along with the American voice in dealing with the Soviet threat and Soviet battleground. And there was also the other aspect, practical aspect coming out of the Second World War was martial aid and the martial plan. And it was felt that the countries who were benefiting from the martial plan would be well advised to get together to actually have a common view on that. So the EU was set up I think mainly for idealistic reasons although obviously practical elements as well. But certainly the founding fathers as they're still known and they sadly were all fathers had a very idealistic view of where they wanted to go. And I think we still hold on to that in many ways across the EU. And the EU itself when it was formed did learn from the lessons of the past. The interwar League of Nations had largely failed because it was just that. It was a collection of member states of national states who really didn't have an awful lot in common and couldn't quite work together for common goals. So those who founded the EU were determined that that wasn't going to happen again. And it also I think reflected and grew out of the internationalism and the desire to cooperate which was again a legacy of the horrors of the Second World War. There were quite a lot of bodies which were set up at a similar time. The United Nations itself of course, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the GAT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, the Council of Europe as well. They all happened at a similar time during the 1950s when it was felt that war had just really just been too awful to contemplate again. An international cooperation was the way forward and the EU I think was the shining example of that if you like because it was and still is obviously much more than just an international organisation working together for common goals. There are those who believe that the EU should be further integrated and political integration is a worthwhile goal. And there are others who think that we should go wider and not have such a level of political integration but we should continue to work as we are now and very much on the same sort of level as we are now. That has always been quite a debate in the EU. My own view on that is that now we are 27 member states, Croatia is due to join quite soon and so we will be 28 in the not too distant future. I don't think closer political integration in the sense that it was envisaged 30, 40 years ago is actually something that can be achieved very easily when you've got such a large European Union. So I don't think that's going to go very much further. We will see the EU working on the basis that it is now, I believe, a common currency which is changing and evolving and that may lead to some further political union but I think it's very difficult to see that happening with such a large EU with the size it is now to any meaningful political extent. But it will be interesting to watch how that debate goes. And of course we are to a large extent in the UK on the sidelines of that because we aren't in the euro. We are not involved in a lot of those debates and discussions within the euro zone and we would in any event I think resist further political integration. Having set up in the way that it was it will come as no surprise to you to learn that the EU actually has a very strong and fundamental value base. And certain principles which the EU is founded on and which a lot of MEPs certainly talk about very eloquently and they are basically democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect and protection of minorities and a functioning market economy. And we're also looking at the capacity to cut the competitive pressures and market forces within the EU adherence to the aims of the economic and monetary union and all members to enact the body of European law which is known as the ackey community as I'm sure you know. So the values are very important and something which we talk about quite often and talk about quite often also in the context of legislation which I think is slightly unusual for a British audience because it isn't viewed in the same way here and we don't discuss things in those kind of abstract concepts in the same sort of way. But I think it's worth emphasising this because those values are very important to the way the EU functions and very important to Member States and actually very important to those of us who are representatives in the European Parliament. The milestones. Well the EU was or as it was the European community grew out of the European coal and steel community which was set up in 1951 really quite early on and the founding members were the six founding members of the what came to be the EEC, Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. They believed in integration, they thought that integration then might be something that they would wish to see projected into the future and they wanted that rather than just cooperation. So from the very beginning the EU was set up as an organisation which was not just going to be about international cooperation or European cooperation, it was going to be about more than that and it was going to involve even at that point some pooling of sovereignty. Now British people and the certain members of the House of Commons get very worked up about this idea of sovereignty. I think it's quite an emotionally charged word but basically what it means is that you will hand over some of your power on the basis that you will get something back in return. So it's not really a giving up of anything, it's actually an exchange and I think that's actually what the EU's always been about. It's a deal if you like. We will do that with you and in return we will get that out of the organisation. And it's something that started right at the very beginning. 1957 was the Treaty of Rome which set up the European Economic Community, the common market it was known. And also your atom because of course the other threat that was very much hanging over the world at this time was atomic weapons which I think did as well as the good things that shaped the post Second World War settlement. I think the fear of nuclear weapons was perhaps the negative side of it. In 1960 the European Free Trade Association was established which included Britain. 1968 was the European Customs Union which was the EEC plus one or two others including Turkey rather interestingly. Turkey's association with what is now the EU goes back that long and in fact the customs union was exactly what it said. It removed all internal customs duties and quotas and established a common external tariff. 1973 was the first enlargement of the European Union which Denmark and Ireland joined and of course the UK. That's 40 years ago when Britain became a member of the EEC. 1974 the European Council was created which is the member state government and is one of the three institutions which make up the European Union. I'm sure you all know there's the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission and those are the three institutions which from this time onwards were to form the EU and were to be the basis of the legislative process in the EU. 1979 was the first year that there were direct elections to the European Parliament. Before that time member state governments had sent representatives to the European Parliament but 1979 was the first direct elections. 1981 rather interestingly Greece during the EU so Greece has been a member of the EU for a very long time as a matter of interest. What I think we saw then after direct elections to the European Parliament, after the enlargement of the 1970s, I think what we saw was an increasing confidence in the EU and an idea that maybe it was becoming an accepted institution and that there were things that could be taken forward. I think what's also interesting during this period is that in this country the attitudes of the two political parties were exactly the opposite from what they are now. The Labour Party was very opposed to the EU and the common market and membership of the common market then whereas the Conservative Party was much more in favour of it. I think one of the interesting things about politics in this country in relation to the EUC and the EU is how that has really changed to be completely the other way around. Of course in 1986 one of the really big issues, one of the really defining moments of the EU took place and that was the setting up of the single market, the Single European Act interestingly done by Margaret Thatcher. It was intended to do exactly that to provide an internal market for goods and services across the whole of the EU without barriers and there were four things that it set up to do. Free movement of people, goods, services and money and it remains to this day the one thing that people who are opposed to EU don't even like membership of the EU want to maintain. I have yet to meet a politician on any side of any political fence except maybe some of the more extreme UKIP members who want Britain to leave the single market and an awful lot of subsequent EU legislation was actually linked to the single market and was intended to make the single market more effective. So I think it's important to hang on to this because after the mid 1980s the single market really was to a very large extent what the EU was about. It had become a trading area and it's a very important one these days for us. Almost half of our exports from the UK go to the European Union single market. Were we not to have access to that it would be serious, incredibly serious. And also all the social legislation or most of the EU social legislation which features a lot in debates in this country at the moment is designed to provide a level playing field across Europe so that no individual member states has an advantage or a disadvantage in the single market because they have perhaps social legislation which isn't quite as good as other member states. So all the social legislation was set up for that very reason. So you have health and safety regulations across the EU which employers and governments have to undertake because if you had stringent measures in one country and measures which were pretty lax in another that would give the country that had the lax regulations far more of an advantage in the single market. And I think this is worth actually holding on to because that's the point of the social legislation. It's to actually provide not only good working conditions across the EU but also to provide a level playing field in the single market. It's an absolutely integral part of it. The other thing that happened with the establishment of the single market was that qualified majority voting was extended. And that's where member states have waited votes in the commission and the council so that no one country can veto proposals. And that was an important part too of the agreement over the single market. Also in the mid 1980s Spain and Portugal joined. Of course after that was the cataclysmic events of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism which changed the face of Europe and were soon to change the face of the EU. And in 1991 not necessarily linked to it but 1991 was another important year in the history of the EU because that was the Maastricht Treaty which began to pave the way for the setting up of the euro. It was the agreement to move forward to a single currency and as you all know the UK had a knocked out from the Maastricht Treaty and we have not as yet joined the euro. Also in the late mid 1990s Austria Finland, Sweden joined and would also set up the Schengen agreement which is quite significant. And because the UK isn't in it we don't hear very much about it but the Schengen agreement actually did away with border controls. So it's now possible to go across Europe without a passport and it just has helped internal movement quite significantly. So the late 1980s and early 1990s were a very significant time indeed and of course in 2002 was the introduction of the euro. And then in 2004 the accession of the former communist countries in the east of Europe as well as Malta and of course Cyprus. So that's when we ended up being an European Union of 27 member states, 25 then in Bulgaria and Romania joined slightly later. And it's this enlargement and this actually absorbing the countries of Eastern Europe was the main reason why the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize which sadly was ridiculed to a large extent in this country. I think very unfairly because the EU has amongst other things kept the peace. I mean there is an argument that Europe may have stayed at peace anyway but certainly the setting up of the EU and the absorbing of the former communist countries I think has actually contributed to a peaceful Europe. So that anyone born after the Second World War in Europe certainly in Western Europe has not had to face the threat of destruction which our parents or grandparents and great-grandparents suffered. And I think that is a big achievement and should be recognised. After the euro we saw the Lisbon Treaty which was aimed at modernising the EU after the enlargement and set up various things which have shaped the way that the EU operates now. We've got a president of the European Council now, it's Herman Van Rumpuy. We have the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy who is the British Commissioner, Baroness Catherine Ashton. The European Parliament itself actually has gained more power over legislation. We do have legislated co-decision as we call it with the Council of Ministers in most areas now, not all of them but most of them. And what that means is that when legislation comes through the Parliament, if it is legislation which is part of the co-decision process, we will go through it in committee, we will amend it, it will go through the plenary session of the European Parliament and then it will go to the European Council. If there's disagreement between what the Parliament wants and what the European Council wants, there will then be a process called conciliation where we aim to sort out those differences. In fact we have to sort them out because if the points at issue haven't been resolved within six weeks the entire piece of legislation falls so there's quite a pressure to get it right and end it. One of the other things that the Elizabethan Treaty did was to involve national parliaments more in the way that the European Parliament works and I think that's actually, I will have better lines of communication which I actually think is quite important because when you have layers of government and layers of legislative making bodies, I think you do need to know what's going on in each particular place and I'm not sure that that's always worked particularly well between the European Parliament and national parliaments. We've also reduced the number of MEPs obviously and we've taken on some new policy areas under the Elizabethan Treaty such as sport and tourism. So that's a brief run through of the key events in the history of the EU which I think has been quite a busy 40 years actually and the EU has grown from quite a small fairly experimental body and it's now very much part of our governance and something which I think it would be very difficult not to have now that we've been in it for such a very long time. In terms of the institutions themselves, the European Parliament works very differently from the Parliament where we are now. The whole EU concept is about consensus, it's actually about people talking to each other trying to resolve any points of issue and that runs through the whole way that the organisation works. It's not only because consensus is a good thing which it is. It's also because the EU itself has evolved so that no one country and no one part of the three parts of the EU, the three institutions has too much power. It's very much a balance and we're always trying to balance the interests of larger member states against smaller member states making sure that things are agreed and that the consensus actually works in practice. Very different I think from the British tradition and I think a lot of us found it an interesting experience when we first started in the European Parliament. We've also tried to make the Parliament quite a family friendly place. We work sensible office hours and when we start at 9 in the morning and finish at 6 at night and we have rather nice to our continental lunch break which is quite good except the Brits always work through the lunch break. So it has very much more of a working feel about it I think than some national parliaments and I think that's very good and it's really quite a good working environment. The other thing I want to say to this audience is that particularly since the 2004 enlargement English has become very much the working language. All the Eastern European countries had English as their second language so English is the social language and quite often and it's happening more and more meetings are conducted solely in English because so many people speak English as their second language. We don't seem to understand this or understand just how useful it is for us and how much of an advantage it gives us. This is an international institution with 23 official languages and the language that they choose to use as their common one is the language that we speak. I always find there's some sort of irony here about the British attitude to the EU which is somebody detached often at best to the fact that the EU has absorbed our language so wholeheartedly and it's just one of those rather strange situations and I think we would do well to ponder on that. Basically the way that the European political system works was set up on the French model so it's also like the French and very much like the American model as well so the European Parliament is a legislature that's what we do. The commission and the council are much more like an administration and the way it works is that the European Commission which is comprised at the top level of a commissioner, one commissioner per member state, the commission will propose legislation. Nobody else at the moment has the power to do so though I think the commission do take on board what's going on and what would be appropriate legislation and what's important and what's topical. It will then come to the Parliament and to the council of ministers to legislate to amend that and then to vote on it. It will then if it needs to be it will be interpreted by the European Court of Justice and then enforced by the commission so that's essentially the process and it's quite useful to know that and to remember how it works because I think what people find often a little bit unusual and unlike other experiences is the role of the commission and there's quite often criticism of the commission is not democratic. It's indirectly democratic in that commissioners generally have been senior politicians in their own countries and they are appointed by the member states. And there's also the question when it comes to democracy of the idea particularly prevalent I think in this country that the EU is not democratic, that there is a democratic deficit. It's true that turnouts in elections to the European Parliament aren't great but then turnouts to elections in this country for local government aren't very good either and they're about the same. The European Parliament and local government turnouts are similar almost always. And of course the European Council is made up of member state governments so that is elected. Of course everything does a five year term so you may not actually find the three institutions in synchronisation with each other. But I think there's a lot said about the democratic deficit as people choose to refer to it which is actually not true in practice. Of course there are things that could be done to make it more democratic and it is still based on member states in that sense it's not a European wide electoral body. It's MEP's return from individual member states and member state governments and the commissioners appointed by member states. But I think when you talk about things like democratic deficit you have to be a bit clear about the definition of that and although I don't think the system of election in the EU is completely perfect as nothing is I think it's not as bad as many of its detractors would actually make out. And of course the principle of subsidiarity which I mentioned earlier is important in this context because nobody in the EU seeks to legislate at European level unless they have to. So legislation and rule making are done at the lowest possible level and we're always very clear that that is the case. And most important issues are still done by member states taxation, social security, health education to name but some of the big ones are still done by member states they're not done by the European Union. So we're not talking about a super state or any sort of super national infrastructure really. We're talking about a few things and we're talking about the internal market and legislation which makes the internal market function better. We're talking a little bit about common security and defence policy and we're talking obviously these days about the euro. What we aren't talking about in the EU and what we don't do is any of those really basic things which are still carried out at member state level. The EU has achieved considerable amount of the last 40 years and one of the things I think I'd like to talk a little bit about is the whole concept of soft power. It's often used when talking about the EU and it's quite important. The EU does have representation across the world. The EU has been part of peacekeeping forces and we do have and not very evolved but there is a common security and defence policy. And there's also power and economic terms where because the EU is such a large trading block it obviously has power and influence in that way. So it's not power in terms of going out and showing that you are bigger and better than everybody else. It's much more influence and I think that's a good role for the EU because the EU after all is its member states and the EU as a block doesn't want none of us and I don't think anyone in the EU wants to supersede member states. So soft power is a very helpful way of achieving certain useful aims and one of the things I would like to cite in this is Turkey which still hasn't yet joined the EU and may not wish to quite as much as it did but there was a time when Turkey very much wanted to become a member of the EU and was very keen to comply with the ACI community and the criteria for joining and one of the things that the ACI states is that no EU member state should have the death penalty. Turkey did of course and they stopped it, they abolished the death penalty because they wanted to join the EU so that's a measure I think of the sort of soft power that we're talking about. There is also a lot of trade agreements which are very I think very helpful in the modern context and as we speak there is a potential trade agreement being negotiated with the United States and it won't surprise any of you to know that the EU and the United States together account for 50% of the world's GDP and nearly a third of the world's trade flows so a trade agreement between the EU and the United States would be a good idea. And so Barack Obama, President Obama has the same idea and he said that he is encouraged by this and that he's encouraged by the benefits of an ambitious and comprehensive market opening arrangement for agriculture and manufactured goods services and investment, the identification of ways to promote compatible regulatory approaches and tackle behind the border barriers and possible approaches to intellectual property rights. So that explains I think that quote from President Obama very well the benefits of trade agreements with other countries and particularly with the United States and the advantages that would bring to EU, the members of the EU, the member states in the EU and the United States themselves. Other things that the EU has done and benefits it has brought is a high level of environmental protection. The environment of course doesn't stop at national borders and is an obvious area to be carried out by the EU. The most environmental protection is based on the polluter pays principle and we've seen air and water quality legislation, waste management, biodiversity protection and the idea of environmental liability. Blue flag beaches were an EU initiative and things like air quality for those of us who live in London or visit London is of course incredibly important and the other environmental matter which is becoming huge is climate change where the EU has had a very pivotal role in tackling climate change and a system for trading emissions which will aim to reduce harmful emissions, harmful carbon emissions particularly by 20% by 2020. We've also done a lot on consumer protection. One of the things that is always cited which I'm sure you know is bringing down roaming charges for mobile phones. I was actually on the committee when that went through and it was a really helpful thing to do and it's just one example of very many consumer protection measures that have gone through. We also, even in the midst of the scandal over horse meat, still have a role in food safety. We've introduced a lot of legislation on food labelling and what goes in food and health measures and those kinds of things. So that's just a very few examples of the kinds of day to day work that the EU does. Of course we are facing at the moment a raft of current issues, not only the international debt, the sovereign debt crisis in the euro which is not resolved yet by a long way even though there are moves to establish banking union. That's still clearly got some way to go. The common agricultural policy at the moment which has always been a thorn in the side of the United Kingdom is at the moment going through a process of reform, not before time I might say. The CAP still takes up 20% of EU spending which is an extraordinary amount when you think about it and it also isn't part of the legislative co-decision process. So there's still quite a lot of major issues around agricultural funding. We're trying to get away from the direct support to producers which is the basis of it at the moment and to look more towards development, rural redevelopment and more environmentally friendly measures which are called greening of agriculture. But it's still got a long way to go and there's still quite a lot of vested interests who don't really want the system to change very much. But if you're interested in it, this is all happening at the moment so it might be, if you want to, it might be something you might be interested in following. We've also seen, to look at the wider political sphere, the rise of far-right parties across Europe which I think is quite a worrying development. There have been far-right countries in several European countries and I think this is something which we all need to watch out for because once those sort of things take hold it can snowball and get worse. Also, the other thing that I particularly wanted to talk about was the tension that comes and goes between the eurozone members and those who aren't in the euro. All the new accession countries are due to join the euro at some point though not all of them had. And this concept of a two-speed euro which is talked about sometimes and obviously if that happened the UK would be on the outside. Now I don't think personally that would be a very good place for the UK to be because we would miss out on being there at the table. And this is important. If you aren't fully part of an institution you clearly can't have a say in what happens to it and what happens in the EU does affect this country severely. And countries like Norway and Switzerland are often cited as being oh yes we can go leave the EU or only be semi-part of the EU and do what they do. Well Norway in fact and Switzerland both of those countries Norway particularly does implement EU regulations. They are bound or they choose and they are bound by EU regulations that they have absolutely no say in what those are. And the same would be true for any country that were to leave because the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place and we are tied economically or tied in terms of trade. And there's all sorts of ways that Europe is part of a whole and it's impossible I would say now for anyone European country not to be affected by that. So if you decide that you're going to leave the EU you lose that place in the negotiations and be able to have some say over what goes on. I don't think that's a very good place for us to be and I therefore think that we need to stay where we are make sure that we have that voice and make sure that we are heard and that we can therefore have some impact on the policies of the EU. The EU is here to stay. There is no going back and I think we should celebrate the advances that the EU has made. There are advances that I've talked about and there are other things as well. I mean my contention having been in the EU for a long time now having been a member of the European Parliament for a long time now is that the EU is fundamentally a progressive institution. Interestingly at the moment though I say that it's completely controlled by the centre right political parties at the moment. The majority in the European Parliament is centre right and in the commission and of course in the council of ministers. But even so the European social model is still very much in existence and the values that the EU has founded on are still very much there. There are of course huge problems and no one is denying the depth of the crisis of the euro but we mustn't forget that it's also a global economic crisis. I firmly believe that the UK has to stay in Europe and I think I will leave it with a question of what would happen were we to leave. Although President Obama quite clearly welcomes a trade agreement with the EU it's becoming even more obvious that that's as far as it goes. The United States is now much more looking towards the Pacific and I think that old relationship where the United States saw Britain as a bridge to the EU and it was all part of the special relationship and the wartime alliances. That's to all its tents and purposes disappeared and in a world where we see the rise of new countries such as India and China it's important and it's more important than ever that the UK stays within the EU within its large trading block our place is very firmly there and if we weren't there where would we go?