This Bulletin explores a strange paradox. Most of what we are told is "inevitable" about the European Union is nothing of the kind. At the same time, many of the EU policies and developments that we are told can be altered or reformed turn out on closer inspection to be almost impossible to change. The EU has always had an amazing capacity to twist language and facts to its own ends, disregarding any honest attempt to search for the truth. Nowhere is this more true than in the misleading way in which unpopular and often ill-thought out policies are regularly pushed through, on the grounds that opposing them is futile, because they are "inevitable", though often entirely practical alternatives exist.

2. Does there, for example, have to be a Single Currency?

A prime example is European Monetary Union. There are no sound economic reasons for the disparate countries of the EU adopting a Single Currency. Growth rates would almost certainly be higher, and unemployment lower in future if there were a flexible currency exchange rate regime in the EU, as there is between all the other trading nations of the world. Free trade does not require the same money throughout the EU, any more than it does anywhere else. In the past, currency unions have almost invariably broken up unless they became single states, and this points to the real reason for the Single Currency proposals. They are designed to create a United States of Europe. The argument that the Single Currency is "inevitable", because this is the only way to achieve a better economic performance in the EU than the dismal results over the last 25 years, is a sham and a fraud. The objective is not higher growth and lower unemployment. It is political union. This is why eleven Member States decided to go ahead with the project. Their political leaders, though significantly, not their electorates in many cases, were intent on creating a unitary European state – in the words of some European political leaders "A country called Europe".

3. Does Britain have to join European Monetary Union?

Even if other Members States go ahead with the Single Currency, there is no reason why Britain should have to join if it is not in our interest to do so. The notion that a country the size of Britain cannot exist outside the EU Single Currency area is absurd. Because our business cycle is out of kilter with that of other EU countries, our trading pattern is much more orientated to world markets, and our economic structure is markedly different from most other Member States, it is anything but "inevitable" that we will benefit from joining the Single Currency. Rhetoric about "missing trains" thinly disguises just how weak the arguments for joining European Monetary Union really are. This is why Britain needs to develop a detailed long term strategy for staying outside EMU.

4. Does there have to be a United States of Europe?

If the Single Currency is not really an economic project at all, but one designed as a major step along the road to the political objective of getting all EU countries to merge their sovereignty into a single European state, how "inevitable" is it that the EU Member States should move in this direction? The answer, surely, is to look round the rest of the world which is moving, almost everywhere, the opposite way. Big agglomerations, like the Soviet Union, have broken up into their constituent parts. Scotland wants more home rule. Czechoslovakia has broken in two. The Kurds want independence. There is a near universal tendency for everyone to want to be governed by people speaking the same language, sharing the same history and traditions, enjoying a sense of nationhood and common experience, with enough social cohesion for the population to be willing to make sacrifices on each others’ behalf. Against this background, how "inevitable" is that a United States of Europe would be viable, if it has to be created against the wishes of large sections of its constituent people?

5. Do we have to accept the current lack of democratic control in the European Union?

Not only do people want to be governed by those with whom they can identify; they also want to be able to elect and dismiss them. An intrinsic weakness of the EU – intended by its technocratic founders who distrusted democracy - is that its most powerful institutions are not subject to democratic control. The Commission is appointed, not elected, and therefore its officials can never be dismissed in elections, even though they exercise the same sort of power as government ministers. The European Central Bank consists of central bankers, serving fixed eight year terms, completely – and deliberately - outside any kind of democratic accountability. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg also exhibits a heavy federalist bias in its judgements. Now we are getting closer to what really is inevitable. Any powerful but unelected body will always put its own interests first, as reformers have always understood. This is what is happening in the EU, and the inability of the people to control its activities is the reason why there is so much frustration with it, and why it generates so much antagonism.

6. Is it inevitable that the powers of the EU’s national parliaments will be eroded?

Unfortunately, unless resolute action is taken to stop this happening, it is. As more and more powers are transferred to EU institutions, run from Brussels, it is inevitable that there will be a corresponding diminution in the ability of national parliaments to control events. The doctrine of "acquis communautaire" means that whenever powers are taken by any EU institution they remain there for ever, to be operated at EU rather than national level. The unavoidable result has been a steady erosion of the powers of accountable national assemblies in favour of the unelected and non-accountable EU Commission, Central Bank and Court of Justice. After all the battles fought over the last century both in Europe and elsewhere for democratic accountability, it would be strange indeed if the peoples of the EU continue to tolerate this trend indefinitely, which again goes against all the tides of modern history.

7. Is the European Union bound to keep on expanding to take in more countries?

The ex-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe have naturally wanted to re-orientate themselves to their more prosperous Western neighbours, but although political leaders in most of these countries have been keen to join the EU, it is less and less clear that this is necessarily going to happen. The EU has been extraordinarily mean in failing to open its markets to CEE agricultural products, and the EU now enjoys a large balance of payments surplus with the CEE block of countries. The EU nevertheless insists that as the price of membership CEE countries should sign up to all the regulations and controls operating in the EU, including the Single Currency. As the more prosperous CEE countries are now growing much faster than the EU, it may not be very long before they realise that they would be better off staying outside. If this were to happen, would Britain "inevitably" be better off inside the EU, or would it make more sense for us to join a free trading group of nations away from the inflexibility of the Community?

8. Is reform of EU institutions such as the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy a practical possibility?

We are regularly told that reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy are high on the British government’s agenda, implying that other Member States share our goals of reducing their financial and environmental costs, let alone their unfairness to British consumers, taxpayers, fishermen and many farmers. The reality is that most other EU countries have no intention of letting any serious reforms take place. They are far more concerned about holding on to their EU subsidies than tackling issues of equity or efficiency. This is one of the major reasons why EU expansion to the East has stalled. It is this lack of a sense of a real European community which is at the root of so many of the fundamental problems faced by the EU, and which makes the absence of any prospect of serious reform of failed policies, such as the CAP and the CFP, one of the most depressing and inevitable aspects of British EU membership.

9. What pressures are likely to occur on the EU budget over the coming years?

There are two predictions about economic developments in the EU over the next decade which can be made with near certainty. One is that there will be unpredictable events during the coming years which will inevitably exert different impacts on the constituent Member States in the Single Currency, putting severe strains on the existence of European Monetary Union. The second is that when this happens, there will be enormous pressure to increase the taxation and spending powers of the EU, to enable larger transfers of resources between Member States to occur. The McDougall Report suggested that between 5% and 7.5% of GDP would be needed – in Britain’s case between £40bn and £60bn. Whether the EU electorates will tolerate large transfers of fiscal sovereignty to Brussels remains to be seen. If they refuse to do so, there is a substantial risk – currently completely ignored by the proponents of EMU – that the Single Currency will break up, at huge cost to all concerned.

10. What, then, is inevitable about the European Union?

We finish with the paradox with which we started. There is nothing inevitable about any of the goals of the European Union. There is, however, a political dynamic and a set of institutions within the EU which makes it exceptionally difficult for it to alter course, even when the arguments for a change in direction are very strong. There is no reason why there need be a United States of Europe. There are no strong arguments for the EU having a Single Currency. There is no insatiable demand among the electorates in the EU for more and more centralisation of power in the Commission, the European Central Bank and the European Court of Justice. There are, nevertheless "inevitable" elements to the European Union, but they materialise at a different level. They occur mainly because of the fractured way in which politics works in the EU. Because there is no real sense of political unity in the European Union, Community rhetoric thinly disguises the relentless pursuit of national and sectional interests. This is what drives the EU forward. This is why the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy are so hard to reform, and why contributions and disbursements to and from the Community budget have never been arranged on grounds of fairness. This explains why there is no effective democratic counter-weight to the unelected people who run the EU, with their insatiable determination to concentrate more and more power at the centre, at the expense of the democratically elected national assemblies of the Member States. The problem for the EU is that these are all developments which are going the opposite way to the flow of human history. This is why what we are now told is "inevitable" will probably turn out to be the opposite of the way the future actually develops.