Editorial: Positive Engagement
For the British, Europe requires a special perseverance of the kind shown in spades by Sir Edward Heath, the former prime minister who died on Sunday. It was a long haul for Sir Edward to get Britain into what was then known as the European Economic Community, and more than 30 years later it is still proving a long haul for his Downing Street successors to turn UK membership of the European Union into an uncontroverted success.
So it is good to see evidence of staying power in today's letter in the Financial Times by a group of pro-EU business leaders and former officials stressing the EU's importance to Britain's continued economic success. Specifically, the signatories call for a successor organisation to the "Britain in Europe" lobby group, now being wound up because it no longer has an EU draft constitution to campaign for, in order to "continue to put the case for Britain's active engagement in Europe".
For the past dozen years - since the Maastricht treaty - the UK debate on Europe has been both fraught and one-sided. To adapt W. B. Yeats, pro-Europeans have tended to "lack all conviction", while anti-Europeans have been "full of passionate intensity". In the process pro-EU business sentiment has waned. Clearly the signatories to today's FT letter hope to take advantage of any less polarised period that the constitution's demise may usher in so as to gain support from those who take a pragmatic business approach to the EU. In this way, they may hope to have strengthened the pro-EU camp if, or rather when, ideological hostilities resume over Europe.
Business stands a chance of being heard when the EU has a Commission led by José Manuel Barroso, and a UK government in the rotating council presidency chair, which have both made economic reform, job creation, growth and streamlined regulation their priority. Of course, much of the economic reform has to be at the national level. But the Commission and the UK have united to try to persuade governments that only by reforming the European "social model" can they sustain it. That is why Tony Blair, the prime minister, has called a special autumn summit to discuss a forthcoming Commission report on "the sustainability of the social model".
But at the EU level, business also has a big stake in Brussels getting its imminent decisions on service liberalisation and chemical and environmental regulation right.
Naturally, UK business will have to reckon with the likelihood that Mr Barroso will want to distance himself somewhat from the UK to remain a credible chief executive to the EU's other 24 shareholder countries, and that Mr Blair may also want to stress EU social policy a bit, at least for his six months in the EU chair. But business should keep banging away at its reform agenda. As Sir Edward Heath showed, persistence can pay off.
