Interviewer
Prime Minister, by your own admission, this was a very important Council, but you have been in a sense isolated on a couple of the major points. Do you feel in any way you have lost out here?
Prime Minister
You keep using the word “isolated” . Let us go through it:
The Single Market, the biggest action programme we have got and upstairs they agree that when it comes to taking action on what we have agreed, Britain is in the lead, so we are not isolated—we are in the lead.
When it came to the Social Charter, there were some who only voted for it on the grounds that it would not be a basis for action. That I knew was wrong and when the Commission tried to get the action programme accepted, they were told “No!” . So we were not isolated, we were actually right about its effect and therefore our decision was right.
On the European Monetary Union, one of the two Papers that is going to be considered is a British Paper. Now that is not isolation, that is being very active and effective. [end p1]
Interviewer
And now you intend to argue your corner through the detailed work that is going to go on on both those issues?
Prime Minister
Yes, but life only goes on in detail, not in generalities, and you cannot exactly say they are going about it in a quick way. That inter-governmental conference is not going to be called until the end of next year after the German election. It is not going to be exactly a quick process.
Interviewer
Can I ask you this point, though? President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl obviously saw this Council as the one that really sets Europe off on to a whole new stage, the sort of visionary approach they were talking about the whole time, and they are using language here that you have signed up to. I look at this one, for example, on the Economic and Monetary Union. “The European Council emphasised the need to ensure the transfer of powers to the Community … .” Now that surely is something that they want. You do not really agree with that, do you, transferring powers to the Community? [end p2]
Prime Minister
Look! We could not even be in the Community unless there had been a certain measure of transfer of powers. What is the Common Agricultural Policy? It is transfer of powers to the Community. What are trade negotiations? We cannot negotiate individually any more, we negotiate through the Community. What is a Single Market? Transfer of powers to the Community on all the directives and standards which are set—and I told you we are leading on that.
Interviewer
I am sorry! I perhaps phrased the question the wrong way. This is quite clearly in the context of Economic and Monetary Union, transfer of powers, and there is a reference in here also to the European Parliament. Now what Chancellor Kohl plainly has in mind is that some of those decisions that we take ourselves in Westminster at the moment will eventually perhaps be transferred to the European Parliament, for example.
Prime Minister
It is interesting that Chancellor Kohl was the one who insisted on making it quite clear that the democratic accountability to national parliaments should be strengthened with regard to EMU. We have very strong democratic accountability to our own Parliament but he is trying to keep that in to the national parliaments on EMU and I am not surprised because, of course, the Bundesbank is under very strict statutory laws and authorities passed by the German Parliament. So I was not surprised about that. [end p3]
What we are very much against is putting any sovereignty away from national parliaments to the Community without democratic accountability, but so are other people and they have not found an answer yet.
Interviewer
So let us be clear! You will set your face continually against any attempts, say, to set interest rates or any kind of budgetary policy or things like, for example, what happens to the pound? If there is any suggestion that that is to be done anywhere else except in Westminster, you will be against it?
Prime Minister
Let me say what Parliament said when it debated it: that Delors Stages 2 and 3, that is the further stages of Economic and Monetary Union as set out by Mr. Delors, are not acceptable to any of the main parties in the British Parliament and I made that perfectly clear. That way is not necessary in order to achieve economic and monetary union. There are other ways. We have set out one and that will be considered.
Interviewer
So you will not see the pound abolished?
Prime Minister
I will not see the pound abolished, no, certainly not! I am not here to preside over the abolition of the pound sterling! [end p4]
Interviewer
No ECUs replacing pounds?
Prime Minister
No, but that is Stage 2 and 3 of Delors. I made it perfectly clear that no major party in the British Parliament will accept that.