Nailing Jelly and EU Laws
February 22, 2009 by Ken
Filed under The British Constitution, The Constitution of the EU, Uncategorized
I must confess that I had lost touch with Martin Coles of Ironies Too, I used to read his original Blog Ironies. Here Mr Coles has a blinder, the President of the EU parliament Hans-Gert Poettering, reacting angrily to the perceived insult to the EU metered out by Czech President Vaclav Klaus during his speech in the parliament this week, when 200 MEPs were so shocked that the felt the need to walk out. Funny thing Vaclav Klaus was only calling for the EU to become democratic and saying a one party state is not democratic it seems this line thought is to shocking to hear in the Parliament of the EU.
“President in the past surely you would not have been able to give this speech in this parliament”
I wonder why not?
Allow me to make a concluding comment We thank you for your recognition of this Parliament as an important institution, if we were not influential today then we would not be legislators for 75% of all laws in Europe and with the Lisbon Treaty nearly 100% of all cases then it would the bureaucrats in Europe who decide but now it is the EU Parliament that decides.
So there you have it the EU is responsible for 75% of all laws in Europe today and when the Lisbon Treaty is ratified nearly 100%
Such percentage figures do not sit well with the British government, who are still trying to argue black is white. As can be seen by this intervention by Denis MacShane responding to Mark Harper (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; during a House of Commons debate on Wednesday, 8 October 2008.
MacShane
Only 10 per cent. of the laws that impact on us in the United Kingdom, adopted by this House principally through statutory instruments, emanate from the European Union. Then, to my horror, Mr. Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, leapt to his feet and quoted another right hon. Gentleman who had said that 50 per cent. or more of regulations came from the European Union. That right hon. Gentleman was the Prime Minister. Naturally, as a devoted admirer and fan of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister over decades, I was very concerned thus to be put in my place. I wrote to the Prime Minister to see whether the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks had accurately quoted him.I have a letter here, very kindly addressed, “Dear Denis”, and dated 30 April this year, in which he says
“that—on average—around 9 per cent. of all statutory instruments transpose EC legislation…I believe this is the correct figure.”
In a debate in this House on 3 June, Mr. Lilley said that about 80 per cent of all legislation emanated from the European Union, quoting a German Government source.
The BBC and others have been trying to find this German Government source—is it Goethe, Schiller, or Mrs. Merkel?—and find that they cannot. It really is not good enough to come to the House and quote anonymous Germans, whoever they may be, in defence of the preposterous position that 80 per cent. of all our laws come from the European Union.
Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman was in very good company. Only two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of switching on the “Today” programme before 7 o’clock to find Mr. John Humphrys interviewing my favourite Euro-comic turn, Mr. Nigel Farage of the UK Independence party. Nigel—I hope that he does not mind my being familiar, but we get on quite well—said that 75 per cent. of all laws in the UK were now decided by the European Union: 5 per cent. less than the right hon. Gentleman’s figure. I do not know what had happened in the intervening two or three months.
As Mr. Humphrys is usually so swift and vigorous in picking up anything that is a palpable untruth, I wrote to the BBC to ask whether that figure was going to be corrected or whether Mr. Humphrys could be politely asked, next time he hears this nonsense, from whatever source, to slap it down.
Before the European Parliament elections it is important that we establish certain accepted truths about the European Union. It is time to nail here in this House, and publicly, the lie that the EU is responsible for 80 per cent. of our laws, according to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, or for 75 per cent., according to Mr. Nigel Farage.
I have here a letter from Mr. Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser at BBC News. It is very friendly, but whenever someone from the BBC writes to one of us on these issues they go into a special room, cover themselves in grease, and then go for a swim in oil, so what he says is, to put it mildly, quite hard to grasp. He turns to Mr. Mark Mardell, the BBC’s excellent Europe editor, saying that Mr. Mardell
“has previously researched Mr Farage’s claim, made on Today, that this figure is 75 per cent., and found that it is supposedly based on a German government statement, although no-one has actually discovered it.
Mark points out, however, that this whole area is a contentious one and that the last time he tried to establish an accurate figure he found the subject, in his words, too ‘jelly-like’ to nail down.”
So the Government claim 9% and suggest that any higher figure is invented because all the apparatus of the BBC and all the power of the British government were unable to track down 
the story of where the figure of 80% came from, when in fact it is very easy to verify that the figures comes from a report of The German Ministry of Justice and was reported by none less than Roman Herzog the ex German president in;
AN ARTICLE ON THE EU CONSTITUTION for the “Welt am Sonntag” dated 14 January 2007 CEP | Hermann-Herder-Str. 4 | 79104 Freiburg | Telephone 0761 38693-0 | info@cep.eu 1 by Roman Herzog and Lüder Gerken
The German Ministry of Justice has compared the legal acts adopted by the Federal Republic of Germany between 1998 and 2004 with those adopted by the European Union in the same period. Results: 84 percent came from Brussels, with only 16 percent coming originally from Berlin. It is not relevant to counteract this by claiming that the “more important” laws are made in Germany. Single market legislation, the “fauna flora habitat” environment directive and anti-discrimination legislation, to name but a few examples, are European legal acts which have brought about a fundamental, sustainable change in Germany’s legal and social structure.
Where does the centralising tendency come from?
One initial cause is the fact that EU politicians are politicians, and EU civil servants are civil servants. No matter whether they are working in a national ministry or in an EU Directorate General: if they are given the task of protecting the environment or potential victims of discrimination, they will do so as extensively as possible, thus creating corresponding regulation. In these efforts – sometimes well-meaning attempts to solve problems, sometimes simple striving for influence and power – it is frequently only a marginal aspect whether the EU has the necessary competency and whether a pan-EU solution is really necessary.
This explains why when pursuing what are in the end politically dictated objectives, time and again the European Union regulates matters which certainly do not have to be harmonised throughout the EU or for which the EU does not even really have any competency at all. This is repeatedly justified with the argument that the Member States have not brought about any comparable regulation so that the problem can only be solved by the EU.
One example of this is the massive impact on substantive labour law by EU anti-discrimination legislation, although the structural contents of labour law falls under the responsibility of the Member States.
A second cause for inappropriate centralisation is the fact that Brussels is frequently used as a backdoor for introducing legislation. If a national ministry, for example the German Ministry for the Environment, cannot assert a certain regulation project on the national level – for instance because the German Minister of Labour puts up resistance or because it would not obtain a majority in the German Parliament, it discreetly “encourages” the corresponding Directorate General in the European Commission to implement the project on the EU level. In Brussels, this will usually fall on open ears for the reasons stated above. The EU project then runs through the normal legislative process. In the end, the Council of Ministers takes the final decision. As a rule, it will be staffed by exactly that German Ministry which had prompted the suggestion in the first place, together with the corresponding ministries of the other Member States, in our example 27 by environment ministries.
This backdoor approach regularly means that the whole project will not be deliberated about adequately on a national scale and frequently neither on an EU scale, for example with regard to its effects on the labour market. This deprives other ministries and in particular, the national parliaments of the individual Member States, of any kind of effective participation in the decision-making process, as would be a matter of course for a legal instrument of this kind on a national level, and as is actually stipulated in the constitutions of the Member States.
Much legislation which cannot be put through the national parliament is thus implemented through Brussels’ back door – now even on a European scale. The consequence is progressive centralisation, triggered by national specific interests.
Peter Lilley said
The European Union has supremacy over British Law. 80 per cent of Britain’s laws are now made in Brussels and Parliament has no power to reject or amend them” -
“The total scale of EU legislation is enormous. Last year, the EU passed 177 directives, which are more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament, and 2,033 regulations, which become directly enforceable in this place, not to mention 1,045 decisions. Even that huge tally ignores the extent to which our powers are diminished by our inability to do things that we would like to do because they would conflict with European law. When I was a Minister, officials would frequently say, “No, Minister, you can’t do that”, because something was within the exclusive competence of the European Union. – Peter Lilley, House of Commons, Daily Hansard, 3 Jun 2008, 3.35 pm.
Dennis MacShane is right it in the run up to the EU elections it is important to know how and where our laws are formulated and therefore who in fact runs the country, and who we the people can hold responsible for our present problems. Gordon Brown is quite clear that 91% of the problems we are experiencing are down to him and his government, so now we know where to apportion blame.
To be fair and equal as Mr Peter Lilly is certain that “The European Union has supremacy over British Law. 80 per cent of Britain’s laws are now made in Brussels and Parliament has no power to reject or amend them.” And seems to be supported by the German Ministry of Justice and the President of the EU Parliament, what is his party the Conservatives going to do about it? Nothing? I thought so.
