Emma on BBC

10 December 2013 - Baroness Nicholson

Emma Nicholson lecture

The 2013 series of Speakers Lectures sees parliamentarians in Westminster speak about their experiences of other parliaments and assemblies.

Baroness Nicholson - now a Liberal Democrat peer - was an MP between 1987 and 1997, first as a Conservative and then as a Liberal Democrat.

In 1999 she was elected to the European Parliament, serving for a decade.

She is one of the few people to have served in four parliaments - the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the European Parliament and the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe.

She never uses the word adoption

36:30 min

There is no legal base for children in the acquis communautaire, which is a body of law 80 pages long with the accession criteria. To get into the European Union you have to first be in the Council of Europe successfully, you have to pass through what we call the Copenhagen criteria. The 10 bullet points, which are the mainly on human rights but also on goods and other things as well.

Coming from the Copenhagen meeting of 1993, that's when these bullet points were more or less formulated. But if you get through those, then you are deemed that you treat your citizens properly.

So there was no legal mandate for having anything on children in the acquis communautaire. Not in any of the competences, children are national competence in the European Union. So it is very difficult.

Then I remembered, this is in September - a couple of months after - that I had been instrumental in getting Gunter Verheugen appointed as Commissioner for Enlargement.

I got word of Mr. Verheugen, and I said you have a debt.

Yes, he said, thank you very much for getting me on the thrown.

I said yes, now we are going to do a deal.

So, we have gotten an extra acquis in. In Romania alone. Which was a reform of children.

And that's exactly what we have did.

It was a magnificent piece of work, which ran the whole Commission of its feet.

....

Then she talks about the good work of all involved, Commission, Council etc.

Then she talks about the old Romanian law of 1956..

She does not mention the 1997 Government change, or implementation of Hague

Then she says the EU programme was around 6 billion euro, if she remembers correct. Nope: it was around 50 million.