Like it or not, the EU exists – we must learn to get the best from it

Published on Friday 18 January 2008 21:47

IT IS with depressing regularity I have to stop myself wading into the letters page debate between the obsessive-compulsives in the pro-EU corner and the compulsive- obsessives opposing them. Both sides selectively quote, ignore inconvenient facts and use shabby tricks and spin for a sterile exchange which really just wastes the time of the readership.

It is of real concern that discussion of the EU cannot start but then be hijacked by extremists and all rational discourse drowned out. This would be a good bit of sport, but for the fact that most of Scotland's laws are EU in origin. So long as the EU is presented as either a soft-focus utopia or a villainous organisation straight out of a James Bond film, then we will all lose out.

The EU is not perfect, but it is not a dastardly foreign plot against the people of Scotland either. Being part of the EU is in Scotland's interests. If the EU were the corrupt monolith we hear so much about, do you not think one of Scotland's MEPs would have mentioned it?

Some would respond that we are blinded by the salary, the gravy train and the glamour. Aside from how hurtful (and wrong) that is, it misses an important point: our respective political parties and the people of Scotland agree EU membership is best for Scotland.

A canard resuscitated each year is that the EU's accounts are not signed off by the Court of Auditors. The reason for this is that the Court of Auditors does not work to international accounting standards, it works to a standard that the UK's accounts would fail, according to the former UK auditor general, John Bourne. The member states are in charge of actually making most EU payments, but do not adequately account for this to Brussels, so Brussels cannot demonstrate sufficient rigour.

This is, of course, pretty sloppy and I have criticised it repeatedly. But I have watched successive commissioners dismiss any criticism as "anti-European" – often to the delight of the Eurosceptics, because it makes reform that much harder. The Europhiles, meanwhile, turn a blind eye to almost anything for basically the same reason.

And this matters, because we are part of the EU and we ignore it at our peril.

Lawmaking depends upon the input of the public, practitioners and civic society, who in a democracy feed into and praise, inform or criticise the works of the legislature. By contrast, I often have to go stotting around Scotland myself to draw the attention of Scottish business, non-governmental organisations and others to the fact that offering input to a particular piece of European legislation might be a good idea.

This week alone we considered regional airport charging; a common corporation tax base; energy efficiency legislation; health and safety at work and consumer credit. We are Scottish politicians dealing with Scottish politics, in a different place.

We need the debate in Scotland to move on from "EU bad/EU good" because few legislative proposals are 100 per cent good or bad. We need people to feed us ideas and opinions on how to influence the reality of proposals, without the posturing.