"On 2 January 1995, Douglas Hurd, as Foreign Secretary, chose to issue a statement intended to remind the British people of the "benefits of Britain's membership of the European Union", urging his party colleagues to follow suit. For a man not known to be stupid, his catalogue of "benefits" defied logic. "First," he said, "the EU brings us jobs." The EU, he claimed, "now takes 53 percent of our exports" (government data for 1995 showed this figure as only 44.6 percent). "The French," he claimed, "cannot block our lamb, or the Germans our beef." (He was shortly to discover to the contrary.) "The Italians and Spaniards pay hefty fines for breaking the rules on milk quotas." (The fines were never paid.) The EU, and NATO, had brought us "the priceless gift of nearly 50 years of peace on our continent." (The Bosnian tragedy was at its height.) "Membership has enabled us to take the European Commission to the European Court of Justice over the French Government's enormous subsidies to Air France." (When the ECJ declared this £2.4 billion subsidy illegal, the Commission reformulated its permission, allowing the subsidy to continue.) "The new principle of subsidiarity enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty is helping to reverse the tide of new EU laws." (Between 1993 and 1994, the total of new directives and regulations had risen from 1602 to 1800.) "We have now persuaded our partners that jobs should be top of the EU agenda." (EU-wide unemployment was now higher than at any time since the 1930s.)"