eurealist.co.uk

The most important post I have seen this week is Richard North`s deconstructing of the news that Clarke wants the EU to adopt the UK’s voluntary code for internet service providers most internet data to be held for six months and some phone data for 12 months. It is not the fact that our government are promoting this proposal but the way they are going about it. Time after time we are told that the EU is not antidemocratic because it is our own ministers who are agreeing to the new laws Dr North shows exactly how the process in his words grates a democracy bypass.

EUREFERENDUM
Officials are saying that Clarke wanted the EU to adopt the UK’s voluntary code for internet service providers requiring. Such records are seen as important intelligence and detection aids.

tomorrow’s meeting of EU justice and interior ministers is an “emergency session”, when Britain intends to bypass “the cumbersome proposals” put forward by the EU Commission “which will run into the obstructive meddling of the European Parliament.” Instead, it seems, the UK will secure a “quick intergovernmental agreement”.

This is exactly the mechanism that was used to introduce the European Defence Agency - originally intended as part of the EU constitution but implemented by way of a Council Decision within the framework of the Maastricht Treaty, as amended by Nice and Amsterdam.

By invoking this mechanism, Clarke can come back to the UK with his new “EU law” and ask for it to be ratified by Parliament on the basis of a single vote, with no scope for amendment, which he will get “on the nod” with the government’s in-built majority. He can then implement it at will in the UK.

By using the “intergovernmental procedure” within the framework of the EU treaties, therefore, Clarke not only bypasses the EU parliament, but our own legislative system, effectively bypassing our own parliament as well. And therein lies one of the greater problems with these treaties – they hand greater power to the executive and reduce the scope for accountability and scrutiny. They are, in effect, a democracy bypass.