eurealist.co.uk

Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph tells us that The European Union is a solution in search of a problem. Whatever the question, the answer is invariably “more Europe“. War in Lebanon? We need to be able to deploy an EU army. A breakdown in the World Trade Organisation talks? Let’s have a more integrated European economy. People voted against the constitution? They obviously thought it didn’t go far enough.

Hannan says “it was more or less inevitable that Brussels would respond to the recent security alert by awarding itself new powers. And, sure enough, John Reid and his fellow interior ministers have rushed to announce the further harmonisation of aviation and policing.

Never mind that the liquid bomb plot was thwarted by the system currently in place. Never mind that, as far as we can tell, the countries chiefly involved were Britain, Pakistan and the United States, and that collaboration among the intelligence agencies of these three states would be unaffected by any new EU rules.”

Hannan also deals with the stock response from Euro-phobes that there are some things that we ought to do together. The, if the terrorists are operating at an international level, we need to take them on at an international level argument.

He says “we have been doing so for decades without any help from Brussels. Sovereign states have evolved highly developed mechanisms for police and judicial co-operation: the Hague Convention, extradition treaties, intelligence sharing, Interpol, mutual recognition of court orders, acknowledgement of sentences spent in each other’s prisons.

What is being proposed now, in effect, is that such collaboration should principally be administered by the EU.”

This is nothing new, of course. Every federalist departure is presented to the electorates as a remedy to some existing problem. The euro was meant to be all about making the single market work better. The common defence policy was sold as a way of bolstering Nato. What is new is the scope of the EU’s ambition. The powers it is now annexing have always been internal to nation states: that is why we call them “home affairs”.

“In a spasm of thoughtlessness, or perhaps of fear, we are giving Brussels control over matters that are central to the relationship between government and citizen. At the same time, we are tossing away the notion of territorial jurisdiction which is perhaps the supreme safeguard of national sovereignty.”

This really is the point which has been made clear on blogs quite some time ago; the EU advances its own adgenda using any excuse it can, this has very little to do with present problem of terrorism and a great deal to do with creating the EU state.

As Hannan says “Europe - Your Country,” say the signs at the European Commission. It soon will be.