Leon Brittan: Britain has made the EU more liberal

From the Centre for Reform Annual Lecture, given in Westminster by the former EU Commissioner

In discussing Britain and the EU in the new world landscape, I have been drawing on my own experience of the Commission, my 11 years in Brussels. That experience leads me to one overriding conclusion.

If we show commitment to the European project, we can persuade our partners to move massively in directions that we favour. I know we can do that, because we have so often succeeded. The only people who have been reluctant to realise this are the British themselves.

I've referred to our success in overcoming the opposition to enlargement. The applicant countries are now on the eve of entering the EU. The massive opening up of trade, the adoption of a broadly liberal stance on trade, was something that I did not imagine possible when I took on this portfolio in Brussels. But we have achieved that, and in the developments since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, the EU has been prepared to go further and faster than any other trading bloc. In the liberalisation of the EU, in areas such as air transport, telecoms and energy, it is clear that we have been able to persuade the union to be an agent for change and for liberalisation. Think how much more we could have achieved nationally if our commitment had been more full-hearted.

That does not mean artificially adopting a rhetoric with which we are not temperamentally comfortable. It means being realistic and pragmatic - being true to our traditions that pull us in those directions. And that approach, realism and pragmatism, is actually welcomed and appreciated by our European partners. It adds something that is needed and is distinctive. If we can put together continental idealism with British pragmatism, we can have in Europe a winning combination.