Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

Does it automatically have to roll right up to the Urals? Simply because Ukraine is part of the European continent, is it automatically entitled to be a member? Can we say for a generation, if not two, that the enlargement of ten, and possibly 12, member states is sufficient and will have to be digested and integrated without any further territorial enlargement for a time? I am not talking about five or ten years but a substantial period.

In the meantime, we must develop our neighbourly policies regarding the countries of the Balkans which are now surrounded by European Union member states and are, so to speak, within our territorial area. If they are not stabilised, they pose a threat to us, just as a house full of dry rot in the middle of a terrace is a danger to every other house.

That said, we must begin to reassure and talk to people, telling them what the project is and what sovereign powers we have agreed to share in the EU. That is all that we need for the foreseeable future, and we will not transfer any more powers. We will do the things set out and proposed in the various individual documents to which we have referred and in the existing five treaties, re-encapsulating and restating them in the constitutional treaty itself. I invite the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, to reflect upon that.

We have some experience in this country from the National Forum on Europe. There is now talk in some other member states and at EU level — certainly in the European Parliament — of doing something similar. How that would be structured and presented remains to be seen. However, the need for that communication exists and I commend the work that Senator Maurice Hayes has done with the National Forum on Europe. It is a model at which many other countries are looking to see how it might be applied. We have enjoyed very good value for money from it, since it has provided a non-adversarial platform and a framework within which very diverse views can be expressed, reaching out to civic society and political groups and parties that are either not fully represented or not represented at all in this Oireachtas.

I will return to the budget itself and the question of Common Agricultural Policy reform. The points that have been made by the Taoiseach elsewhere and by Deputy Naughten in the House today are pertinent. It is hard to understand how a country with all the diplomatic experience and wisdom that Britain has shown over many years, having agreed to a deal three years ago, could attempt unilaterally to tear it up in the way it did. A reaction was bound to come from people who, like us, have quite an interest in the matter. I hope Britain understands, as Deputy Naughten and others have said, that the CAP is in any case already reforming itself, being on a downward drift.

There are fears in rural Ireland about the implications. One need only read the article in today's edition of The Irish Times about the future of the 3,800 sugar beet growers in this country to get a sense of their fear and concerns. It is simplistic to suggest that we should demolish it and have free trade. We must use our negotiating weight in the World Trade Organisation and ensure that Peter Mandelson, on our behalf, seeks structural reform of the relationship between primary agricultural producers and what we can do.

We must begin to project European values in terms of the World Trade Organisation concessions that we make. For example, the treatment that Brazilian workers on large sugar plantations must endure is unacceptable. If we want to open up our markets in an attempt to equalise income distribution across the globe, we must start to examine mechanisms that will allow us to exchange one concession for a concession domestically. Either the Brazilian Government moves to improve and enhance basic rights for its workers or else we must find some other way of achieving that end.

These are issues that must be explored. I have spoken about sugar but the same could apply to many other commodities. If we open up our markets as the neo-conservatives in the United States would like us to do without any type of quid pro quo or without any safeguards in regard to the income distribution effect of that decision, in five to ten years' time we will have a totally skewed income distribution derived from the wealth generated by those selling into our markets but no redistribution of any significance in what are currently Third World countries. In such circumstances, there will be a massive reaction in Europe to the point where there may well be a protectionist backlash.

This has happened before in 1914. We came into the 20th century with an international currency, modern communications, new technologies such as steam and motor transport and a totally open trading system. Within 14 years that open trading system had largely disappeared and only re-emerged to a significant extent at the end of the last century. Protectionism and the reaction to domestic political forces have not gone away and it is vital that we can understand people's fears in this regard. If people agree to trade away, give away or have taken from them certain protections, such as those enjoyed by many rural farm producers in this country, and the consequential effects are not those that were promised, there could be a serious backlash.

I wish the British Government well during its Presidency. I hope it will take on board some of the comments that have been made and will attempt to prepare the ground if it cannot do a budget deal in the next six months. It should prepare for such a deal for all the reasons the Taoiseach mentioned earlier during Question Time. We must ensure new member states can get access to and draw down funds in their own domestic budgets, limited as such funding may be.

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