DH-A: At some point, these countries cease to be European in any real sense. But this is a much greater problem for the European integrationists, because they cannot tell us who is European.

PPR: It ends at the Bosphorus. That seems fairly clear to me.

DJ: Well it's not so clear in Eastern Europe, is it? Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and all these countries — would you have them in?

PPR: I would have preferred myself to stick to Latin-Christian countries, but the fact is that Greece joined and now we've got Romania and Bulgaria, and I think there are political reasons for doing that.

I want to come back to two questions. The first is the question of sovereignty. The first element of sovereignty is defence — if you can't defend yourself, then you can't consider yourself a sovereign nation. And we have not been able to defend ourselves since the beginning of the Second World War. Since then, we have been totally dependent on America, and therefore we can in no sense say that we've got true sovereignty. Now even our posturing as a military power is crumbling. We can't afford it. We can't afford these Trident submarines, we can't afford to send our army all over the world interfering in other people's affairs. I think that idea that you have, of Britain as a self-standing nation state, can't continue.

DH-A: We are a considerable military power, but we've never pretended we can defend ourselves without alliances. Nato is a successful defence pact — signed in the month I was born, so I know exactly how old it is. But the EU doesn't like that: it likes a monopoly of international relations among its members. So we're witnessing the growth of a militarised EU, which is obnoxious for previously neutral countries such as Ireland, and also threatens to hand decisions about defence and security to a decision-making process of which we're only a part. So we'll end up with a situation whereby we provide the army and they provide the decisions.

The difference between EU and Nato is that the latter is not a law-making body and cannot force us to fight or defend anyone. There is an obligation to help, but we are not obliged to go to war. That is not yet the case in the EU either, but that is the trend. It's a trend in the wrong direction, and also threatens to separate ourselves from our relationship with the US.

PPR: Aha, this becomes the nub of it!

DH-A: That separation I also object to on a number of grounds. Not only have we had several annihilating wars in Europe, and attempts to create gas-chamber civilisations, and it's usually been the Americans who've come to our aid. But even ignoring that, there is no way that we can create a peaceful world along democratic values without America's engagement in Europe, and I think that is threatened by the rise of a military capacity in the EU.