As the German Constitutional Court has ruled that the EU arrest warrant is not compatible with German law. It is thought that the Government will attempt to introduce a specific German law to allow a substantive hearing for suspects before they are deported thus effectively undoing a key feature of the arrest warrant.
It is not clear how this will work, but the German ruling may leave the EU arrest warrant open to legal challenge in other countries.
An article by Anne Palmer
Although two Countries (France and Holland) have given a resounding NO to a Constitution for the European Union, and the peoples voices were loud and clear in a referendum, it is as if everyone in the Commission and the European Council were deaf because the work to implement certain Articles contained in the EU Constitution is going ahead before ratification of all 25 Countries.
There is no legal basis for implementing these articles without a new treaty.
a A European Diplomatic Service
b. A European President (whose new office has already been set up)
c. A European Foreign Minister confirmed as Javier Solana;
d. A European Space Policy with officials concluding an agreement on its
implementation.
e. A European Defence Agency
f. A European Fundamental Rights Agency to implement the Charter of
Fundamental Rights right across all EU legislation, to become enforceable as a Bill of Rights for the whole of the European Union.
g. A European Asylum and Immigration Policy.
h A European Public Prosecutor.
Although the principle of subsidarity (contained in article 5 TEC) is already enshrined in the EC Treaty, there is at present no mechanism for applying it. If there is no legal basis without the very necessary EU Constitution, will anything brought forward before ratification, be “legal? Will anyone affected by the alleged illegal acts have any “come back”? Compensation rights? Redress? Will the EU be ‘taken to task’ for going beyond their remit? Abusing their authority? If we, (our Country or any person) act in such a way, what action is taken against him/her or Country? We all know the answer to THAT!
Many are the questions that should be officially asked about the present conduct of the European Union by national governments. Which then poses the question, WHY are these questions not being asked? Especially, when many in high office are allegedly “concerned†that the people (their citizens, as they have called them) are not with them, or feel about the Union in the same way that the Commission and Council feel about it.
Let me clear one point before I go further. The EU Constitution is just that. A real Constitution and why on earth the Government chose to pretend that the Constitution, which henceforth, if ratified, would be the source of authority of the EU and would be open to interpretation by the European Court in entirely unpredictable ways, was a mere tidying up exercise is completely beyond my comprehension, but it should make everyone wary as to what the Government might be up to now.
All the previous EU treaties will be revoked, they will no longer exist. The Constitution creates a new primacy creating a new constitutional arrangement, a new legal order, if implemented into UK law by an Act of Parliament. The word Constitution as expressed by Bradley and Ewing-Constitutional and Administrative law, 13th Edition, Chapter 1-refers to the whole system of government of a country, the collection of rules which establish and regulate or govern the Government.
The drafters of the Constitution, the length of time it took in the Convention, the signatories to the Constitution are well aware of what they wanted and what they have done. Our Government simply did not have the guts to tell the people.
Full Article
Lords and the Hunting Act
From Lord Donaldson of Lymington
Sir, Peter Riddell (Political Analysis, July 13) asserts that the Hunting Act appeal, at present before the judicial committee of the House of Lords, involves a struggle between the “greater activism†of the judiciary on the one hand and ministers seeking to uphold the principle of the legal sovereignty of Parliament on the other.
No so. The legal sovereignty of Parliament, that is to say of the two Houses of Parliament acting in agreement with each other, has never been in issue. Nor does anyone dispute that the two Houses, in enacting the Parliament Act 1911, intended to limit the powers of the House of Lords to delay the enactment of Bills for up to three sessions in order that the Commons should have a chance to reconsider.
The dispute concerns whether the 1911 Act made a once and for all limitation upon the delaying power of the Lords, or whether it also empowered the House of Commons unilaterally to reduce further this delaying power. By the Parliament Act 1949 the Commons asserted a right to reduce the delaying power from three sessions to two and passed the Hunting Act 2005 in reliance upon the validity of this assertion. The Countryside Alliance disputes this assertion, and accordingly claims that the Hunting Act is flawed.
The role of the judiciary is to interpret the 1911 Act. There is nothing novel about this. However, the dispute raises an issue of huge constitutional importance. It is whether, on the assumption that the 1949 Act is valid, there is any impediment to the Commons further reducing the delaying power of the Lords to one month. That would render the Lords powerless as a revising chamber and in effect produce a unicameral Parliament.
JOHN F. DONALDSON
House of Lords
eurealist.co.uk
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