eurealist.co.uk

Sir - Daniel Hannan’s article (“So, you thought the European constitution was dead, did you?”, Opinion, March 20) was courageous and penetrating.

Written answers in the Lords reveal how the EU is taking forward the Fundamental Rights Agency in Vienna, which will execute its all-embracing charter.

This is the initiative that the former Europe minister Keith Vaz told us would have no more force than the Beano and that the Prime Minister said would not be enforced by the Luxembourg court.

It deprives us of our remaining legal independence by imposing the EU’s social model on our economic, employment, welfare, education, health, environment and cultural policies.

The devil, as usual, is in the detail. The Government now claims that the legal bases for this massive extension of EU power are:

1. Article 308 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community. But this only allows the EU to act “in the course of the operation of the common market”.

2. Articles 30, 31 & 34 (2)e of the Treaty on European Union. But these cover “provisions on police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters”.

3. The fact that the Fundamental Rights Agency is replacing the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which was, in turn, based on Article 308 as above. So this was also unjustified.

When pressed on these answers, the Government has admitted that the agency’s legality “is still under discussion in the council and its legal basis has not yet been agreed”.

So the initiative proceeds in a legal vacuum, supported by the Government. Yet the Lord Chancellor has admitted that the Luxembourg court is already relying on the charter in its judgments, and the commission has ordained that all new EU legislation must conform explicitly to the charter.

The underlying problem is that when the Luxembourg court rules that all this is legal, there is no appeal against that verdict.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, London EC3

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