Jim Nicholson: Europe and enterprise

Jim Nicholson wants to promote a new narrative about Northern Ireland, with more businesses exploring European opportunities. Peter Cheney asks him about his current impressions of the EU.

Europeans still associate Northern Ireland with conflict but a single visit makes visitors want to come back. That’s what Jim Nicholson found when he organised a regional tour for the bureau of his European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group.

MEPs were “highly impressed” with Parliament Buildings despite the September rain, took a trip to the North Coast “and they really loved the scenery and they’ve all said they’re coming back.” Imagine the contrast in July when the Short Strand and Ardoyne riots made international headlines, making members question whether it was safe to go.

“So we have got to be aware,” he surmises. “Our image is still there and every time the people of Europe see bombing, rioting, cars burning, the old image comes back … We’re going to have to work, I think, for some time before we get rid of that image.”

As expected, Nicholson names agriculture and fisheries as his two main priorities. By 2014, he wants to see a less bureaucratic Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), producing good food and giving farmers a “fair living”.

Common Fisheries Policy reform must give “more local control” to fishermen. Current plans would let groups of member states decide how to implement policy but the Commission could still intervene if problems arise.

“Hopefully if we can get those two things done, then we will have done quite a good job,” he adds, before emphasising the need to “educate and encourage” Northern Ireland’s SMEs and entrepreneurs and opening doors for them in Europe.

As part of the ECR visit, Nicholson hosted a business breakfast to highlight European R&D funding and he wants to see more businesses coming over and finding new opportunities on the continent.

“If you’re going to get Northern Ireland working again,” Nicholson states, “I believe we do it through the development of our small and medium-sized enterprises because I believe they have the best potential.”

Rather than focusing on large inward investors, politicians need to work with local men and women who have ideas and “the determination to deliver”.

Influence

In keeping with his leadership campaign pledge, David Cameron took his MEPs out of the federalist European People’s Party (EPP) and formed the more sceptical ECR group in June 2009. The group is now the joint fourth largest in the Parliament (56 MEPs) but the EPP remains the largest with 264 MEPs.

Nicholson rejects the suggestion that this move puts Northern Ireland at a disadvantage: “I would put forward the view that I am in the strongest group in the Parliament. I am now in the group that’s the fourth largest group in the Parliament. I am now in the group that is actually growing and not getting smaller.”

The ECR gained two MEPs through defections this year and he expects it to take two committee chairs when the Parliament reaches its half-way point in January.

In a larger group, Nicholson would “never” have been appointed as a co-ordinator on the Agriculture Committee, where he leads on the CAP’s dairy package, and could have lost his full committee membership. He contrasts his position with Diane Dodds who, he claims, has “no influence at all” as a non-inscrit and Bairbre de Brún’s “communist-orientated” group (GUE/NGL has 34 members).

His main reflection on the continent’s fiscal turmoil is that Europe “has always done too little, too late to actually stop the crisis continuing.” Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy had just claimed to “have solved the problem again” at a weekend summit before Franco-Belgian bank Dexia was bailed out by governments.

Nicholson credits Gordon Brown (a rare tribute) with keeping sterling but stresses that the euro crisis’ local impact cannot be ignored: “The fact that we are outside of the euro zone gives us some degree of comfort but I give the warning that if the euro zone goes into meltdown, don’t expect that we will not be affected by it. We live in a globalised world now. All currencies are going to be affected by any kind of meltdown.”

The Republic and other smaller euro members have handed their financial sovereignty to Germany and France, he remarks, and Nicholson hopes those two countries can bring Europe back to more stable growth.

Need for debate

As for the UK’s own membership, Nicholson is “quite happy to have a referendum” but also wants a real debate to “clear the air” on the pros and cons of the European Union. He also expects a poll on any new treaty.

Turning on the eurosceptics, he asks: “Are they certain if they were out of Europe tomorrow morning, that there would be the same money going into agriculture, same money going into rural development, same money going into many of the other areas?”

The UK’s net contribution was £9.2 billion in 2010-2011 but Nicholson predicts that Westminster would have different spending priorities from the European Commission: “Does anybody in Northern Ireland believe that any United Kingdom Government are going to give the support to our agricultural industry that’s presently coming?”

Serious questions have to be asked about how withdrawal would affect Northern Ireland’s trade with the rest of the EU (accounting for 49 per cent of manufacturing exports) and the UK’s international position.

“I think the people of the United Kingdom have got to ask themselves one real question: ‘Do you really want to be part of Europe or not?’ If you don’t, then get out. If you do, then take a leading role in moulding it into what you want it to be.”

British ambivalence towards Europe means that that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy now drive European policy, he explains.

While stronger than the euro, sterling is weaker than the dollar and, in his view, has survived because of the Coalition Government’s fiscal policies.

Commonwealth countries, which accounted for much of the UK’s pre-1973 trade, have now switched to the Far East. Ultimately, he thinks that the alternative is nostalgic: “The world has changed from that time we went in. You just simply can’t rewind the clock and go back to some kind of utopia.”