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the overlapping membership between the organisations meant that the Governments concerned would take the same view in NATO as in WEU and vice versa. The Americans replied to this that it was beside the point. The roles of WEU and NATO should be distinct. Не thought that ought to be clearly understood. It had been repeated in the correspondence over the Franco-German proposals. Sir D Gillmore said again that the subordination of the WEU to the EC would mean in effect the end of NATO.
6. Mr Niles said it was perhaps hard to see what exactly the end result would be. He noted that there would be a return to the whole subject by the EC in 1996. In that sense the arrangements being proposed by all parties to the 1991 debate were transitional. The WEU treaty itself came to an end in 1998, which meant that there would be discussions on European defence arrangements then if not in 1996. He thought in the meantime from a brief discussion that the President had had on 16 October with the Danish Prime Minister that the Danish view was very close to that of the UK. The Danes were now very staunch on NATO matters.
7.
Mr Niles said that the security debate would also be influenced by the prospect of EC enlargement, and in particular by the proposed inclusion of Austria, Switzerland and Finland, to say nothing of other candidates. One effect would be to make EC institutions less appropriate for the discussion of WEU-type issues. He noted that there were contrary views, with the purists in the EC arguing that new candidates would have to accept all the rules currently in the book at the time of their joining.
8. Sir D Gillmore said that East European applicants would be particularly affected by this process. The federalists wanted to screw the rules down as hard as they could now, with this in mind. But there were bottom lines for us. We wanted to sign the IGC text if this were humanly possible. But if our bottom lines were crossed, we would have to refuse.
Sir D Gillmore explained that there was overriding need for Britain that CFSP, interior and justice matters remain outside the Treaty of Rome. He explained the role and power of the European Court of Justice. There were parallels to be drawn with the post- revolutionary debate in the United States. Not many people realised that the precedence of European law over national law did not stem directly from the Treaty of Rome but from a ruling by the European Court of Justice. If CFSP were under the Treaty of Rome and it were to be agreed that joint action in pursuit of unanimously agreed foreign policies would be subject to qualified majority voting then independent national action could become justiciable. This would apply for example if British troops were abroad as part of CFSP and the British Government wanted to get them back, perhaps as a result of some particularly troublesome incident. Areas like immigration and asylum were also critical for the British. The British Government was prepared to do a lot in practical terms hut provided such areas remained outside the Treaty and the European Court of Justice.
10.
Mr Niles commented that perhaps Chancellor Kohl's ideas on
/immigration
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