A Government spokesman said Britain now considered it was “sufficiently protected” over the charter of human, civil and social rights, even if the declaration became legally binding in any revised treaty
On justice and home affairs policy, efforts to whittle away at the national veto have also been resisted, said the spokesman, with Britain likely to be able to “opt in” to joint EU criminal law and judicial policy only when it wishes.
On this day when the Euro enthusiast are gathering to celebrate the 50th birthday of the European Project by patting themselves on the back for a job well done, whilst in the real world the real people of the European nation states have indicated in recent polls that they are not as enthused with the project as they are supposed to be. And in response to the silly 50 reasons to love the EU in the Independent this week, it occurred to me that now would be as good a time as any to post a few reasons why I oppose the EU.
1. It is undemocratic
http://www.teameurope.info/FSno1-whyundemocratic-FINAL.pdf
2. It has created a political elitist class which is increasingly insulating itself and its policies from public accountability.
3. It has removed the sovereignty of our Parliament in most areas of government power and has therefore reduced our national political debate to the few areas that are still within the remit of the people we elect, which is why the main political parties are so close on so many areas of public concern.
4. It has removed the sovereignty of British Citizens to elect and dismiss their own law makers, by passing so much power to the EU we the votes cannot choose between different policies because the political parties simply do not offer us the choice as they are bound by the EU.
5. Reduced consumer choice- with its bureaucratic mania for controlling everything it has removed choice by insisting that all products conform to it own rules. Instead of equal recognition of products to allow each state to sell into every other state the EU has defined what they may sell.
http://www.google.com/search?q=illegal+tomatoes+&hl=en&start=10&sa=N
6 Harmonisation: Reduces the available produce on the shelf- by listing only those products which may be sold and the cost of having a product enterd on the list is prohibitive. Thus we loose the richness of historic fruit and vegetable diversity and miss out on new products.
http://www.cen.eu/catweb/cwen.htm
7. Mass immigration: uncontrolled mass immigration has a detrimental effect on wages and increases the pressure on our housing transport hospitals etc.
8. REGIONALISATION: The regionalization of
9. Take over of Higher education system:
SOCRATES, DELTA, REMTEX, TEMPUS and EUROCIS European Commission’s Human Capital and Mobility (HCM) programme, and funding from the Training and Mobility of Researchers (TMR) and NECTAR programmes CEMP (Creation of European Management Practice) The Jean Monnet Project CORDIS, EU-funded Academic Associations and Organisations
10. Propaganda: The EU using our money to promote its-self trying to convince us that the EU is a wonderful project to us when we do not have the choice in the first place
11. European Document Centres and high street shops in order to “promote and develop the idea of the EU as our nation state and study in the field of European Integration
12. No demos There does not exist a single group of people in respect of whom the EU could be a democracy there is not an EU wide political party, there is not an EU wide press.
13. No mandate: Even if there were or is a European demos, what is done by the Commission is not in response to any expressed or felt need of the citizens. In normal democratic politics you have occasional elections, during which time certain issues are publicly discussed. Whoever wins power has some justification for carrying out whatever programme they were proposing while trying to get elected.
14.Accounts: The EU’s accounts have not been signed off for several years by the EU s own accountants.
15. Lack of Transparency
16. ECJ partiality
The Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ) is not an independent court but owes a duty of loyalty to the EU Commission and has been used ion the past to extend the power of the EU beyond the agreed treaties.
17. CAP Common Agricultural Policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy
18. CFP Common Fisheries Policy and the destruction of our fishing industry http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp_en.htm
19. “new approach” to technical harmonisation. I see the affect of this as totally ridiculous, My electricitian is about 55 years old has been to college to learn his trade and has kept himself up to date by studying the latest proposals yet he is forced to pay an inspector to check hi work for a period of six months so that he can continue in business, my previous electricitian decided he had enough and looked for another job.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2004/11/more-hidden-integration.html
20. EU Arrest Warrant; now we can be arrested in our own home by our own police at the request of a foreign court and extradited to that courts jurisdiction without any protection from our own government even for crimes which are not recognised in Britian.
21. The Euro, although we are not a member of the euro region there is an ongoing attempt to create the Euro as the currency of the whole EU, if we remain in the EU at some stage we will have to convert to the Euro.
22. The EU Constitution, Voted down by the French and Dutch yet still in the background many EU based moves to represent it, either in is its entirety or piecemeal so that we do not get the chance of referendum. The Constitution refounds the EU as an international actor in its own right with its Constitution superior to member states Constitutions and for the first time recognises in a treaty that EU Law is superior to state law. The Berlin Declaration acknowledges the intention to refund the
23. Its anti Christian values : There is something fundamentally wrong with an organisation purporting to be democratic, when the view of the EU Parliament is that there is no place for the basic values of millions of its citizens.
24. Socialism; Nothing wrong with socialism but it should be recognised as only one form of political thought to place it at the heart of the constitutional settlement denies other political thought.
25. The cost of membership: The E U will cost every man, woman and child in
26. ID Cards
27. EU Passports
28. Forced Citizenship of the EU
29. Trade Deficit Before joining the EU the
30. Directives: It took 1368 EU Directives to create the Single Market. One directive can cost Industry £1,000,000,000 (e.g. Waste Monitoring. 94/62 - official estimate!). Such EU law is uniquely, and savagely, enforced by huge new armies of
31. EU Law corpus Juris
32. it can’t last
http://eureferendum2.blogspot.com/2007/03/success-of-eu.html
33. It is attempting to create an armed force I do not believe such an anti democratic organisation should control military force.
34. Massive overregulation, of just about every area of life
35. There is a distinct feeling of alienation between the people and the political leaders.
36. Federalism:
37. The break up of Great Britian as a political entity and the destruction of Britian as our nation state.
38. Lies and misdirection.
39. Fundamental Rights, I do not want the EU to gift me the right to life or the right to freedom of speech etc. Which I already have, only to retain the right to remove it in the interest of the
40. Life has got much worse since we joined the
41. The working time directive: I do not want a Eurocrat in
42. Border control immigration, it is our nation state we pay the bills and we should decide who comes to live and work in our country.
43. Turning our back on our Commonwealth friends when Britian was in dire straits in the last two world wars it was people from our Commonwealth who chose to fight for us, we traded across the globe with these countries.
44. EU Embassies and diplomatic service: The EU is not a nation state it is not my nation state and I do not want it to represent me or my country abroad, I do not want to be forced to use an EU embassy and I certainly do not want to see one in
45. EU waste management:
46. Road Pricing the Galileo space programme:
47. Rapid Reaction Force: we are spending so much on preparation for this futuristic battlefield force that we have little left to correctly supply our troops for the actions they are being asked to undertake now.
48. Pushing the secular adgenda: Conflicting values, the right to religious freedoms and the right to abortion or gay marriage are contradictory principles. By choosing to promote the secular view the EU denies its own fundamental rights.
49: No perceived limits to the power of the EU: The EU continually extends its power, cooperation in one area is deemed to require cooperation in others the Monnet Method. So an open border policy will eventually lead cooperation in criminal law because we cannot prevent even know criminals from entering the country. This is calculated to eventually lead to the creation of one nation state with one central government.
50: Treason: The crime that dare not speak its name; out ministers swear allegiance to the British state not to the EU, after all we elect them and we pay them and they could not hold their positions of power without taking the oath of allegiance. They should therefore work only for the benefit of the British state and the British people. Instead they agree to proposals in the EU forum which do not benefit the British people and they agree to pass powers away from the British parliament, and allow those we have not elected and cannot dismiss to influence our nation state.
Angela Merkel at Fogh.
The German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel is visiting an embattled Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on
Merkel now wants Fogh’s “yes” to a new democracy project in the EU. The rejected constitution will be awakened again and will be adopted in other terms.
First they will change the name from Constitution to Treaty. Constitution is “grundgestez” in German. Then
From part I some bombastic words have been removed without changing the contents. The Court of Justice has already used Part II in the Constitution concerning the common fundamental rights more than 200 times.
The Court of Justice has already moved the pillars between the present treaty of
The more the Court of Justice decides, the less the teatry needs to contain to give the same result.
But changes in the decision making from unanimity til qualified majority and the entry of new voting rules together with a smaller Commission can only happen at a government conference. And this is what Merkel now wants to negotiate during the German Presidency and get approved by the end of 2007.
The very comprehensive part III is being rewritten into a few amended sheets compared to the Treaty of Nice. Part III already contains 85% of the Treaty of Nice and 15% of it is new. By making the changes short, incomprehensible and without context you think that it’s possible to cheat the voters into believing that the issue at stake is something different from the rejected constitution.
But the core remains the same and it is by moving power from the voters and the popularly elected to the public servants and to ministers and from small countries to big countries.
The core is 44 new areas for decisions with so-called qualified majority. On these areas, the Danish parliament and other national parliaments in the EU will loose the opportunity to legislate independently and to use the veto power in the EU.
The main part of the laws will be decided by public servants in 300 secret working-groups under the Council of Ministers, after being prepared by 3000 other secret working-groups in the Commission.
The members of the European Parliament will have greater influence but they will win much less than the voters and the national elected will lose.
The democratic deficiency will increase. The legislative power will lose to the executive power. Montesquieu’s seperation of powers will lose to Machiavelli.
For Merkel the most decisive is the implementation of the so-called double majority, where you have to vote after population in the future. This will increase
From being necessary conversation partners we will now become superfluous for the pluralisation. That Danish members of the national parliament can agree on this, testifies their lack in the knowledge behind the decision making process in the EU.
For
Fogh and the national parliament’s majority are also willing to sell the Danish Commissioner. In this matter, they should give a call to the leading law graduate from the Danish Council of Trademen., Peter Vesterdorf, who is a member of the Liberals and a strong federalist and who has written the first Danish educational textbook about the European Parliament.
He has been following thousands of EU-cases during
The removal of a Danish commissioner is such a decisive change of the co-operation in the EU that the compressed Constitution should be put out to a referendum.
It would suit the opposition and the Danish People’s Party, if they use Merkel’s visit to announce that they do not want any changes sneaked in the EU-co-oeration without a referendum.
Abbreviated, and in particular the editor has removed the quotation from the official government pamphlet delivered to
every household during the 1975 referendum campaign:
“The Minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against
British interests”.
As I’ve pointed out in my PS on the website: “Once the move to majority voting has taken place there is no way that it
could be reversed, or that a new member state could become an exception. Thus the decision taken now would apply not
just to Scotland within the UK, but to a future independent Scotland if it joined the EU.”
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1350212006
Veto on criminal justice
When we joined the then European Common Market we were assured we would always have a veto. But since then, there has
been a shift away from the need for unanimity, and more and more decisions in the European Union are now taken by
majority voting.
Now the EU proposes to remove the veto on criminal justice matters, which were not even included in the original treaty.
Our elected parliament could then be obliged to change our criminal law solely to comply with the wishes of other EU
governments.
This plan is to be discussed on 22 September, and there is a real possibility that the Home Secretary, John Reid, will
agree to relinquish our veto.
It is no use waiting before complaining. Now is the time for us to protest to our MPs that Dr Reid should not surrender
our veto. If he does, parliament should take the earliest opportunity to repudiate his decision.
(DR) DR COOPER,
British acceptance of EU legislative powers - Comment - Times Online: “From Mr Mark Wallace
Sir, Mr David Stephen (letter, September 24) is in my view dangerously optimistic in his assertion that the European arrest warrant is an unmitigated triumph for “trust†between EU member states over “civil libertiesâ€.
Contrary to the beliefs of the European Movement, it is not necessary to construct an artificial, would-be state in order for sovereign nations to simply co-operate on extradition.
The development by the EU of a character in law and, worse, a character in determining criminal law and legal procedure, is repeatedly portrayed as being born of necessity, when in fact it is born of federalist fanaticism.
Furthermore, whether or not Mr Stephen likes the Italian judicial system, no foreign political process ought to override a country’s unique judicial checks and balances.
What he portrays as the smooth bypassing of a gridlocked Italian system could just as easily be the smooth denial of my rights from birth under British justice.
I am not reassured on the basis of this one case that a “judicial leap of faith†is ever a sure enough way to protect and preserve our liberty.
MARK WALLACE
(Campaign Manager, The Freedom Association)
Bridgnorth, Shropshire
”
Dr Liam Fox MP Shadow Foreign Secretary writes in the Times the constitution is effectively dead. It is not a setback, but a chance to create a new direction. But warns that we should beware of cherry pickers, and chooses three areas which he says will be on the cherry picking agenda.
Arguing that the seemingly never-ending transfer of power from nation states to
Brussels must stop, and where possible be reversed. Politicians must recognise that the constitution was a step too far on several fronts, most notably the attempts to give the EU the trappings of statehood, the reduction in our ability to use the veto and the proposed charter of fundamental rights. We must be vigilant that these proposals do not reappear by the back door.
What was actually being proposed in the constitution represented the transfer of yet more powers from the people to Brussels. The British people would have been obliged to give up of the veto in no fewer than 63 individual areas, including such key issues as criminal law and justice. This is no tidying-up exercise. It is, rather, a massive extension of qualified majority voting. The British people must be given a say if such a change is mooted.
The dangers posed by the constitution’s aspiration to build on the European Convention on Human Rights are no less threatening. The proposed charter of fundamental rights would be the bedrock of constitutional law in the EU. Judges in Brussels would accrue immense power over the interpretation of legislation and therefore over the people of this country. Since power would thus be transferred away from the British people, again it is vital that the people have their say.
At a more symbolic (but no less significant) level, we cannot simply sit back and allow the EU to acquire the trappings of statehood. The constitution would create a single diplomatic service and a “presidentâ€. Further, the EU would be allowed to sign treaties as a single legal entity — an act universally recognised as one of the definitions of a “nation stateâ€. It should be unthinkable for such a change to be countenanced without the explicit approval of the British people. Only a referendum would ensure that.
For all the current talk of crisis in Europe, this is really only a crisis for the European political elite, whose 60-year vision has come to an end. For the people of Europe, it is an opportunity to refashion the EU into an institution whose priority is to generate jobs and prosperity, something which the present European project is hopelessly ill-suited to do.
The debate is no longer about what can be saved from the blueprints of the past, but what the blueprint for the future of Europe should be.
The problem is that the ECJ is already using the charter of fundamental rights to inform its decisions even though it has no legal basis they hope that by so doing they will create such a basis in community law, and who is to stop them doing so certainly not Tony Blair and his EU cohorts they have signed up to the whole package.
Dr Fox argues the constitution would create a single diplomatic service, however already that is being created, the EU foreign Secretary designate called last week for the building of the service to continue because he said despite the French and Dutch votes that at some that service would come into being. Also they have already given up the veto on immigration and there is no mechanism to stop the Prime Minister agreeing to give up the veto in any other areas he decides.
Dr Fox should brush up on his remit, if he thinks the EU Elites including Blair are going to meekly scrap their prized proposals just because a few million people said they did not want the constitution. Does he not realise that these are the same elites who belive that the people like children, do not know what is best for them, and must be gently guided into the Promised Land by our revered leaders.
It is quite amazing how people who supposedly understand the constitution make very basic mistakes and then build a whole argument on that mistake, of course being built on an incorrect assumption the argument then fails.
A case in point was a letter to the FT last week written by no less a dignitary than a Jean Monnet Chair of EU Politics. Michael O’Neill, Jean Monnet Chair of EU Politics, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG1 4BU
Initially he writes "The correspondence from Dr D. R. Cooper (Letters, May 20) shows how ill-informed the debate on the European Union constitutional treaty - to give that text its proper name - has become."
Arguing that even his golf club has a constitution he said "and this august body does not stand above the law of the land"
Thus omitting to mention the difference is the EU constitution actually says that its law that will be be above the law of the land, where as I assume his golf club does not make such a claim.
The professor then continues;
"In fact, the text under discussion is not intended to be a state-like constitution in the classic sense of the US’s constitution. Rather, it is a power-map of who does what in a complex and novel EU polity, a polity that is not a state, nor aspiring to be a state, but an arrangement where sovereign member states agree to share some of their powers for the general good".
Ignoring the fact that you do not actually share power if it is given to a higher authority, the higher authority has gained power at the expense of the state. The whole idea of shared sovereignty is an EU concept that conceals what is in reality a transfer of power.
Using as his argument that;
“The clue to what is intended lies in the carefully constructed title of "constitutional treaty". The critical word here in describing the text is the noun "treaty", not the adjective "constitutional". Few anti-treaty commentators, for whatever motive, acknowledge this significant fac”
However either by omission misdirection or basic inability to read a title, the professor has built his argument on the wrong title, it is not “the European Union constitutional treaty” but “A Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe” To turn his own logic back on him if the clue to what is intended lies in the carefully constructed title, then it is “a Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe”.
In other words it is a treaty; until it is ratified it then becomes the constitution because the treaty has established it as such, this is confirmed in the Constitution itself because the text say it is:
Grateful to the members of the European Convention for having prepared this Constitution on behalf of the citizens and States of Europe, Who, having exchanged their full powers, found in good and due form, have agreed as follows:
He then goes on to make two more incorrect statements, one that supremacy of EU law has been in the treaties since 1952 and two that the constitution will not affect criminal law every aspect of civil law, or national constitutional law, before finishing his letter thus: “By all means let us debate the implications of the new treaty, but let that debate be properly informed and based on accurate information.”
To which I can only add yes please let the debate be based on accurate information.
Eurealist :: Main Page: “EUROPEAN UNION TAXPAYERS’ CHARTER
by Eurealist on May 14, 2005 02:47PM (BST)
EUROPEAN UNION TAXPAYERS’ CHARTER
by Eurealist on May 14, 2005 02:47PM (BST)
EUROPEAN UNION TAXPAYERS’ CHARTER
From a rather disgruntled David Jacques Bremen, Germany. Who says of the EU;
If we can’t get out of it let’s at least do something constructive by applying the ideas in the attached and admittedly incomplete draft taxpayers charter.
Not a bad idea!
We EU taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners in every conceivable way. Our Lords and Master in politics and the public service have granted themselves a raft of totally unjustifiable privileges over the years resulting in a situation akin to that which prevailed 150 years ago before “democracy†became a buzzword. In those days a small privileged minority governed and administered and the rest were only required to do two things – pay up and shut up. Government was unrepresentative, which is pretty much what it is now. Or do you feel genuinely represented by your local Member of (the European or national) Parliament? Participation in elections is at a record low, crime is rising and the “black” economy is now at least as large as its legitimate equivalent throughout the EU. Instead of determining the causes and curing them, both national and EU governments have decided to employ even more civil servants to try and gaol everyone involved in “economic crime†and the black economy. They have moved the goalposts of crime so that in Germany, to take but one example, the tax code is understood by no one (as the country’s top tax accountant recently admitted in public on TV) but every breach of it, however minor, is treated as a crime and not a misdemeanour as it used to be. This is a bureaucrat’s paradise – the state now always has a means of pressuring the ordinary citizen into behaving as they wish.
We taxpayers have got to stop the rot getting to the point at which some latter-day Cromwell feels impelled to send them all home and advise them to take their baubles of office with them. I append my proposals on the subject and hope you agree with them. If you have any suggestions to make – let me know. David Jacques mailto:dajacques@t-online.de
1. Politicians and civil servants must be treated in law, particularly tax law, exactly as we are. Bodies of law such as the German “Beamtengestze”, which basically state that permanent civil servants are a better class of human being than all the other inhabitants of the country, must be forbidden at EU level.
2. It follows from this that politicians and civil servants must be made 100% liable to exactly the same confiscatory taxation and excessive social insurance contributions as all the rest of us. No more luxury free indexed pensions for which they do not even pay taxes although they definitely represent an enormous financial advantage over the rest of us. If you or I are entitled to a free pencil every week according to our contract of employment then we have to pay tax for the pecuniary advantage that this “perk” represents. Exactly the same logic must apply to the political caste and the civil service.
3. There are a whole host of examples of totally unjust and unjustifiable perks and privileges for politicians and civil servants that you and I are denied. A short list of those that occur to me spontaneously follows.
Members of the European Parliament have legitimised a travel expenses swindle for themselves that has cost us taxpayers billions to date. The excuse for it is that the lowest paid MEPs need money, which is nonsense. All EU civil servants are paid according to a single salary scale – the same should apply to MEPs. How to determine it? Simple. Add together what each member country pays its ordinary MPs, divide the result by the number of countries – and that’s the MEP’s current salary. This swindle must be stopped and those who have drawn payments under it must be required to either
a) justify that/those payment/s just as you or I must to our tax office or
b) be obliged to repay all monies received that cannot be so justified, i.e. for which no proof that would stand up in a court of law of having incurred the travel expenses involved is provided.
Some MEPs make so much out of this racket that they can afford to buy a new flat or house every year. Such properties should be treated as are the proceeds of drug smuggling if the MEP concerned cannot prove entitlement to the funds used to purchase it, i.e. sequestered by the national government of the country that MEP “representsâ€.
MEPs habitually claim “attendance money” for conferences etc. that they only spent 10 minutes at to register their names on the attendance list. There is no reason in the first place why they should be paid extra for condescending to do the job they’re paid for. If such events involve travel expenses then those should be recompensed only against proof of their having been incurred. Any allowance merely for attending events that are part of their duties should be scrapped altogether. Attending events that are no part of their official duties should be their private problem. That’s the way the tax authorities treat us, isn’t it? MEPs should be fully liable for the same taxation in their respective home countries as their fellow citizens. They should also be entitled to any allowances tax-deductible for ordinary citizens – but nothing more.
4. The principle of personal responsibility that has always prevailed in private industry must also apply to politics and the public service. Politicians and civil servants who waste our hard-earned money must be forced to repay it. A prime example here is the subsidy that was payable for transhipping grain. It used to be a popular public entertainment to watch ships come into Hamburg harbour, offload grain, reload the same grain and then sail on. Each time they did so entitled the owners to a thumping subsidy. It took the EU/EC over 18 years to even notice something was wrong! In future, anyone responsible for such idiot legislation should be liable for the damage done to the taxpayer. This would have the added benefit of stopping the EU passing laws on such earth-shakingly important things as the curvature bananas are allowed to have and the like.
5. Unequal treatment and inequitable laws have unfortunately become the norm. In Germany, all payments from pension insurance policies taken out from 01 January 2005 on will be liable to full taxation. Note that politicians and civil servants will continue to enjoy their luxury free indexed pensions with no deductions at all. No liability to any tax for the pecuniary advantage this unjustifiable privilege represents, either! Similar legislation exists in virtually all EU nations. All legislation must in future apply to ALL equally with no special treatment for anyone. Any law that results in unreasonable hardship/s for anyone if applied to everyone equally should simply not be passed. Wouldn’t you say that’s fair?
6. The EU/EC are currently trying to make all interest on all bank accounts in so-called tax havens liable to what they call withholding tax. This sounds superficially fair and just. It isn’t. If I represented the Channel Islands at these negotiations I’d refuse to negotiate anything with the EU/EC “fat cats” opposite me at the negotiating table until and unless those “fat cats” became liable to exactly the same taxation and social welfare payments as their fellow citizens in their respective home countries. They currently draw outrageous salaries and pay no tax on them at all, so what they are indulging in here is actually hypocrisy of a very high order. In reality the “tax havens” are the last small niches of lean, mean and efficient government left in the developed world. Channel Island politicians do not enjoy a raft of privileges at their taxpayers’ expense plus fat salaries and allowances. What the EU is trying to do is to deprive these “tax havens” of their sole national income and make them dependent at some future date on EU subsidies for financial survival. Guess who will foot the bill for that. The social welfare argument, by the way, doesn’t apply. The Channel Islands have arguably the best social welfare system in the world, and the other tax havens are a lot better than the average EU member nation on average.
7. EU governments grab about 70% of their respective nation’s GNP and try to kid us all that it’s for our own good. This is rubbish. The money is needed above all to maintain farcically bloated government machines. A lot of governments are already unable to foot the bill for the thumping indexed pensions their former politicians and civil servants are entitled to. The reason is that these people don’t pay for them. Stop and think about it. We’re giving preferential treatment to professions that are purely parasitic in the sense that they produce no direct economic good whatsoever. Those who do produce direct economic good are treated as second-class citizens and required only to subsidise their “betters” and not make trouble. The only other example of this behaviour in history is the old Chinese empire, which ossified in about the 13th century and was unable to defend itself against anyone by the 19th. That is what our Lords and Masters are letting us in for!
8. What we taxpayers urgently need is legislation at EU level limiting taxation to 30% of GNP at most plus social welfare payments. These latter would have to be used 100% by law for that purpose only and no other. The cost of administering social welfare would have to come from the capped 30%. This provision is essential to prevent wily politicians misusing the money for purposes that have nothing whatever to do with social welfare. That’s what Kohl’s German government did – they used the money for “reunification expenses” and plunged the country’s social welfare system into difficulties that still seem insoluble. The government of the country is desperately trying to solve those difficulties without doing any damage to the interests of the political caste or those of the public service. As there is no law in Germany, as there is in the UK, forbidding persons in the public service from putting themselves up for election to political office without first resigning from the public service the interests of the political and public service castes are identical (about 75% of all elected German politicians are serving civil servants!). The result of the absence of such legislation is a form of creeping and all-pervasive corruption that virtually makes democratic government impossible. Government in many EU nations is currently “government of the people by the civil service and for the civil service”. This is absolutely unacceptable in so-called democracies.
9. Politicians voted out of office should be entitled to the same unemployment benefits as the rest of us and nothing more. The major difference, let’s remember, is that they are at least partially responsible for losing their jobs whereas we ordinary mortals very rarely are. This would force them to ensure those benefits are better administered and more appropriate than they are now, as well as scrapping unjustified privileges. Currently, politicians booted out by us electors are entitled to enormous “golden handshake†payouts and generous pensions, often indexed. Both at the taxpayers’ expense, of course, and after a ridiculously brief qualifying period of service. In many countries they continue to enjoy various benefits of office after being kicked out. There are lots of former politicians at various levels throughout the EU still entitled to an office, a secretary, a car, a chauffeur, free petrol and a host of other perks at our expense years after leaving political office. This must be scrapped. Once you’re out, that’s it. All the benefits of office are granted only to the person currently exercising that office and all former holders lose them entirely. All the arguments put up about this measure and others like it making it difficult to find people of adequate calibre willing to enter politics, by the way, can safely be ignored. People are queuing up to join the vast subsidised ego trip that is politics throughout the EU. Why else are e.g. the EU’s conditions of employment known as “the gravy trainâ€?
10. Democratic accountability is another major issue. Who votes the EU’s commissioners into office? The answer is that they get their jobs on a purely nepotistic basis. No ordinary taxpayer/s is/are consulted. So whom do they actually represent? Not you or I, that’s for certain. Take Patton. He doesn’t represent the UK – no UK elector was ever consulted on his appointment. He doesn’t represent the current governing party – he’s Conservative, they’re Labour. Some cynics think he may represent sinister Hong Kong tongs, but that’s really off the wall. What can be stated with confidence is that he is entitled to a thumping pension, very probably indexed, as former HK governor plus another, equally thumping and also probably indexed, from the EU when he leaves office. He has paid for neither, and pays/paid no tax for the pecuniary advantage such enormous pensions represent. The very least we should demand is that he and others like him have their EU pension set off against all other income, i.e. only one pension per person in public service, the amount being set off against their total income from other sources. EU retirees who happen to be stinking rich in private life – lots of them are, after profiting for years at our expense – should get no EU pension at all if their income equals or exceeds any such EU pension.
The obvious answer to the EU/EC total lack of democratic accountability is to hold referenda on the Swiss model. Disregard the screams about the expense – it’s much cheaper than the current costs of maintaining the European Parliament, which is basically nothing more than a hot-air chamber. It has very little legislative or administrative responsibility despite costing us billions.
10. At least one EU head of state would now be in prison were he not a politician. Parliamentary privilege should not cover criminal offences at all – any politician involved in any such case/s must be treated just as we would be. Where private litigation is concerned that does not involve any breach of the criminal law, politicians should be subject to such litigation just as we ordinary mortals are, the only difference being that they would not be required to take any action in any such litigation whilst the parliament of which they are a member is actually in session. The moment that body takes one of its frequent long recesses the politician/s involved in any such legal proceedings would be in exactly the same position as we ordinary citizens.
Brevity favours the Liars
Reading the headline in The Telegraph “How the EU will change your livesâ€
I expected the article to be a reasonably comprehensive description of the innumerable of ways the EU will affect the people and the government of the United Kingdom. From undermining the power of the Westminster government, and our elected representatives to vote on new laws, how EU citizenship will increase its relevance at the expense of UK citizenship, how the EU social policies will affect our working hours, perhaps the EU Arrest warrant or the extension of the ECJ into criminal law and mutual recognition of other states criminal laws. How the pan-European super prosecutor will affect our rights as British citizens, or our Basic English Law. The affects on foreign policy by the EU foreign minister having to agree an EU position and promote that at the UN, or the eventual EU seat at the UN, the closing of British embassies to make way for the EU embassies. The ultimate aim of pan-European Union tax harmonisation, the extension of QMV, the extension of the powers of the ECJ into so called basic rights, the VAT on Children’s clothes, food labelling, The list of “How the EU will change your lives†goes on and on.
I was a little surprise to find that the Telegraph description of how the EU will affect your life was a short puff for the Constitution, very short, in fact it takes just 59 words to tell us what the Constitution is
“What is it?
The constitution, agreed by EU leaders last year, is designed to make the bloc run smoothly. It is the core legislation of the EU and will become law only if ratified by every member state. The EU expanded to 25 states following the inclusion of 10 new members in May, mainly from central and eastern Europeâ€
And a further 177 words tells us what is in the Constitution and what it does
“What’s in it?
• A long-term president of the European Council of national leaders to be chosen by majority vote, with a renewable term for two years six months instead of the current six months.
• A foreign minister to be appointed for a five-year term to develop EU’s nascent foreign and security policy and to raise its profile on the world stage. The constitution re-commits the EU to a common foreign policy, which must be agreed unamimously.
• Most decisions will be taken by a “qualified majority” of member states, with unanimity required in fewer cases. More voting power to be given to countries with larger populations, rather than current disproportionate weight of smaller states.
• Charter of Fundamental Rights to be incorporated in EU law, applicable subject to national legislation.
• Preserves member states’ individual vetoes on direct taxation, foreign and defence policy and the budget.
• In essence, it sets in stone the EU’s values and political objectives and makes clear that member states confer power on the EU, not the other way round.â€
I could dissect the few words and show how the “long-term president of the European Council†will affect the way the council works how it will diminish the power of the Council and increase the power of the Commision and Parliament. Or the possible ramification of the EU common foreign policy and the veracity of the vetoes on direct taxation, foreign and defence policy and the budget. How the extension of QMV removes the power of the people we elect to do the job we elect then to do, ie. looking after British interests, or the weighting of votes in the council is only a way of increasing the powers of France and Germany so they remain in the driving seat. How the ECJ may use the inclusion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights to extend its and the Commissions powers into all aspects of our lives.
I could also point out that the EU Constitution will affect; health, education, pensions, transport and public services. Foreign policy and defence, is already affecting the British army, which is being restructured to fit in with the EU rapid reaction force, govern our relations with the world and NATO our control over commercial policy, that fisheries policy will be locked into the Union. With legal personality, the Union would take away most treaty making powers, sign us up to adopting the Euro. That it re-founds the EU on its own constitution requiring us to facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives. That it allows the EU to take any power it decides (Flexibility Passerelle clauses) and removes the power of the people to have a voice in any changes to the Constitution. It also makes the EU constitution and law superior to our constitution and law.
But it is the last point I would like to explore a little because we are hearing a lot about this one way or another and it gets to the heart of the problem.
“In essence, it sets in stone the EU’s values and political objectives and makes clear that member states confer power on the EU, not the other way round.â€
This is three different principals rolled onto one, the Constitution does set in stone the EU values, and its political objectives, and makes clear that member states confer power on the EU, as such it is completely unacceptable.
What are the EU Values
The preamble tells us that they are “inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of lawâ€
These all sound very fine values, but in which way does the EU Constitution bring about democracy how does it protect our rights how does it increase our freedom or equality and who decides what the law is. The short answer is that the EU removes democracy and sets that in stone, by giving the EU the powers to decide our rights would bring the EU Court of Justice into virtually every area of life and society, family law, property rights, succession, labour law, children’s rights, rights to health and education, the right to legal remedies, all of which will be decided not by people we elect based on our constitution and their election promises, but by unelected and unaccountable Eurocrats in Brussels who would also retain the power to remove any of those rights, in the interest of the Union.
What are its political objectives?
Again the Preamble tells us
The Union intends to continue along the path of civilisation, progress and prosperity, for the good of all its inhabitants, including the weakest and most deprived; that it wishes to remain a continent open to culture, learning and social progress; and that it wishes to deepen the democratic and transparent nature of its public life, and to strive for peace, justice and solidarity throughout the world, that, while remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their former divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny, to continue the work accomplished within the framework of the Treaties establishing the European Communities and the Treaty on European Union, by ensuring the continuity of the Community acquis,
“united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny†entails deciding to give up the way we are at present governed by our own parliament that we can vote out, for rule by Eurocratic edict from people over which we have no democratic control.
“ensuring the continuity of the Community acquis†entails never returning power to the state government.
In short the Political objective of the EU is to replace the governments of all the member states and become the full government Europe with one law, one tax system, one central bank, one armed forces etc. everything it has done and everything in the constitution is about removing power from nation states.
The biggest lie that we are expected to swallow is the misunderstanding of the meaning that the “member states confer power on the EU†Yes this is absolutely true the member state do confer power on the EU, but think about that for a moment, go back to the other principal of the Community acquis, this means that once a power is conferred on the Union it remains with the Union, the states then no longer have the power to either remove that authority, or to have any control on how that power is used. In the same way that we the people vote for an MP, once we have given our vote to our representative, we no longer have the power to control that MP. Yes we can write to them and ask them to do something, but no matter how many of us do so, it is entirely up the MP if they wish to act as we suggest. We in fact have only one power and that is the power to decide not to elect that MP again, this of course does mean that an MP knows they must be responsive to their constituent’s demands if they wish to retain their seats. Contrast that to member states granting the Union powers, once granted it has that power for ever, and there is nothing the member states can do about it for all time in the future.
As Richard North said “Brevity favours the Liarsâ€
Harmonising Criminal Law
The “FOC Myth†series did not mention the fact that under the new EU Constitution, all Member States will have to respect judgments handed down by other national legal systems within the EU. At the same time, membership of the EU will entail an obligation to treat all European citizens “in a comparable fashion”, a principle which will also apply to judicial proceedings.
The FOC only tried to argue on ‘Primacy’ means that the EU controls our laws†basing their opinion solely on issues covering trade, access to markets and common standards, thus ignoring that the constitution also moves towards harmonising criminal law.
This fact is brought home when we realise that the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee is proposing a draft recommendation to the Council calling for better standards of criminal justice in the different Member States. Calling for a Quality Charter for Criminal Justice in Europe to serve as a reference framework for all EU countries.
They say “The Member States’ trust in each other must be strengthened in order to allow for the mutual recognition of judgements and even for Member States to hand over their citizens to judges in other Member States”
The Civil Liberties Committee would like to see an “essential minimum degree of harmonisation” in areas of national legislation such as the minimum rights of prisoners, the possibility for them to serve their sentence in their Member State of residence and the gathering and assessment of evidence. And rules on the right to a fair trial, the right to access to legal aid and the right to be tried within a reasonable time should also be harmonised.
Our own Home Office minister dealing with European evidence warrants Caroline Flint, is singing from the same EU Hymn sheet. She told the Commons European scrutiny committee: “The application of the principle of mutual recognition to orders to obtain evidence is fundamental to improving the existing mutual legal assistance procedures, without resorting to extensive harmonisation of procedure.”
She also said dual criminality was not necessary in relation to search warrants “because mutual recognition is founded on the principles of equivalence and trust in each other’s judicial systems”.
All this means is that a person is accused of committing an offence in another EU country they can be arrested and extradited to face legal proceedings in that country even if no British law was broken.
So we have a situation that in this sense EU citizenship is removing the rights we have as UK Citizens, our own government is colluding with others to disregard its responsibility to its citizens, to whom they owe an obligation that we should only be tried according to our own laws.
Why Eurosceptics should vote for the Constitution
Richard Corbett is a UK Labour MEP. He was also co-rapporteur for the European Parliament’s report on the European Constitution.
Richard Corbett, I find it sad that much of the debate about the proposed new EU constitution is couched in the usual hyperbole. Eurosceptic parts of the press are already conjuring up fears of an imminent centralised superstate.
A Constitution is the supreme law of a State, which has primacy over the laws of its provinces or regions in any case of conflict. It is the ultimate source of legal authority for the territory it
governs. It is enforced by a Supreme Court, in the EU’s case its Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Of course, it’s easy to see why those on the extreme right are opposed to the new constitution. There’s much in it to displease them – respect for human rights, respect for minorities, principles of non-discrimination. And so there should be. But what puzzles me is why genuinely moderate eurosceptics should object.
Trying again to define those of us against the Constitution as far right wing. The argument that a Constitution should set out socialist policies is totally flawed in any case, that this constitution does that, is to set in stone today’s thoughts on methods of acceptable government, to show how wrong that is we only need to do is set in stone the political mores of one hundred years ago, to see that if those people had believed they had the right to say all governments that were to follow must accept their definitions of social policy.
On the grand scheme of things, the new constitution doesn’t change much, but those changes it does make are almost exclusively aimed at addressing the most common eurosceptic complaints. It emphasises yet again that the European Union is a voluntary association of co-operating states, with only those responsibilities that its members unanimously choose to give it. Surely, not even the most ardent anti-Europeans could object to that!
The Constitution abolishes national control in nearly 30 new policy areas. They include civil and criminal law and procedures, asylum and immigration, Europol and Eurojust, energy, structural
funds, commercial treaties dealing with services, culture.
Actually the Constitution changes everything, it turns upside down the power flow, now it is from the member states to the Union when the EU is reformed its authority will not come from the members but from the constitution itself. In fact the constitution gives very little power to act independently to the member states and even in those areas of power that remain, the government must operate under the umbrella of the EU, and each area that the states have agreed not to allow the union to operate are under constant threat and are only temporary, as Gisela Stewartsaid and
It gives more power to the European institutions but does not make those institutions more accountable to voters It is also far from clear that the principle that national governments should continue to be in charge of policy-making unless these policies would be better handled at European level is being respected, the draft document from my experience at the Convention it is clear that the real reason for the Constitution – and its main impact – is the political deepening of the Union.
It will be difficult to amend and will be subject to interpretation by the European Court of Justice. And if it remains in its current form, the new Constitution will be able to create powers for itself. It cannot be viewed piecemeal; its sum is more than its parts.
This Constitution is unusual in that it also initiates processes for future development with the aim of deeper and ever closer integration. Where integration can be deepened no further, this text has rigid rules as for example in the list of exclusive competences of the Commission. Power at the centre cannot be returned to Member States. Where the political climate means that certain ideas for further integration are not yet acceptable, the Draft Constitution creates the structure for a process to develop later. An example of this is defence and foreign policy.
Corbett has written a rebuttal of Stewarts claims (Same link as above) but as she, not him, was a member of the Presidium, I know who I would prefer to believe on what happened during their deliberations.
As far as his take on the Constitution itself well if the following is anything to go by then I thing a quick look at the document will show his views are just that views with no substance “It stokes up the hoary myth that the EU is about centralisation, but as she well knows, the draft constitution does not transfer any new fields of responsibility from national to European level. Rather, it increases the accountability of the European institutions to member states and to citizensâ€
In general, the new constitution contains a set of modest but worthwhile improvements to the current constitution of the EU (the existing set of overlapping treaties). It does three main things:
• streamline decision-making to prevent gridlock in an enlarged EU;
• introduce greater democratic safeguards;
• clarify the nature and aims of the Union.
It makes it easier for the EU to override any objections which of course does prevent gridlock,
“The Constitution, and law adopted by the Union’s Institutions in exercising competences conferred on it, shall have primacy over the law of the Member States.”
A relevant point here is that EU governments accepted the ECJ’s assertion of the primacy of EU law in the 1960s, when the then EEC dealt with a far narrower range of issues than the EU does today. It is one thing for Member States go along with a principle established by the EU Court and applied to a restricted range of matters like customs duties or tariffs. It is quite another to
concede national sovereignty to an EU Constitution whose writ covers everything from tax policy to criminal law to foreign policy and fundamental human rights.
So much for the broad outline, which is hardly controversial. It’s when you look at the detail of these provisions that it becomes clear just how many traditional eurosceptic criticisms are addressed.
They complain about apparent lack of democracy. So the constitution now gives the directly elected European Parliament control over all aspects of the EU budget. The adoption of EU legislation will be subject to the prior scrutiny of national parliaments and the dual approval of both national governments (in the Council) and the directly elected European Parliament - a level of parliamentary scrutiny that exists in no other international structure. The exercise of delegated powers by the Commission will be brought under a new system of supervision by the European Parliament and the Council, enabling each of them to call back Commission decisions to which they object.
Directly elected but on what mandate? Richard North has already blown a great big hole in this particular argument…
“mandate†in this context is interesting. It is generally held to mean the sanction given by electors to members of parliament to deal with a question before the country. In other words, the candidates for the election set out their stalls, the electors look at the rival offerings and choose between them.
In national elections, this choice has some validity because the winning party – or coalitions – go on to form a government, which then (in theory at least) executes the voters’ mandate. But in the European parliament, this cannot happen.
For a start, the election does not produce a government, so the parliament has no power or authority to execute a mandate. It cannot, for instance, decide to repeal any EU laws – it cannot even initiate any laws. Those powers lie elsewhere. Therefore, the candidates – or the parties they represent – cannot produce manifestos in any meaningful sense of the word, as they have no means by which they can deliver on promises made.
Furthermore, in a parliament of 732 members, Britain elects only 78 MEPs, and then from different parties. But even if all were from one party and were clearly set on one course of action, they do not have the numbers to dictate terms. Even as a united bloc, they are swamped by the members from other member states.
Therein lies one of the central defects of the European parliament. The essence of a parliamentary system is that it is the core of a system of representative democracy, where the members go to parliament to represent their electors’ views (and safeguard their interests). But British MEPs cannot represent the interests of their electors – there are not enough of them to do so.
Furthermore – and this strikes at the heart of the concept of a supranational parliament – there is no commonality of interest in the peoples of the member states that would enable discrete blocs to emerge that could be adequately represented by a multi-national coalition of MEPs. In other words, there is no European demos and, without that, there can be no European democracy.
An ‘emergency brake’ is introduced, enabling national governments to block majority decisions in certain sensitive areas if they consider it to be of national importance.
No such power exits there is no blocking power available to the Member states.
They complain about lack of transparency. So the constitution now insists that the Council of Ministers should always meet in public when legislating, meaning that no laws will be enacted behind closed doors.
But there is no openness about the Commissions proposals no way of opposing them.
If government, any government, “believes it can do as it wishes without the constraint of a constitution which is enforceable then no-one and nothing is safe.”
“The law should be obeyed. Even by the powerful. Even by the Trade Unions. We sit here to carry out the law. To see that the law is obeyed. And that we will do. A subject cannot disregard the law with impunity. To every subject in this land, no matter how powerful, I would use Thomas Fuller’s words over three hundred years ago ‘Be you ever so high, the law is above you’”. Denning
“A government above the law is a menace to be defeated” Lord Scarman
Parliament cannot do as it wishes. There are a great many things parliament cannot do. It cannot sit for more than five years, it cannot permit anyone not elected to speak in its chamber, nor anyone who has not sworn an oath of allegiance, it cannot dissolve itself and it cannot legitimately depose The Queen.
No parliament can bind its successors. This principle is itself a maxim of common law, and has been often restated:
“Acts derogatory to the power of subsequent parliaments bind not” Blackstone and Halsbury
Neither can parliament legislate in contravention of the treaties which established the constitution and sovereignty of this nation - a point central to our case. Furthermore, parliament has a duty of care to preserve and protect the rights and freedoms of the people who elected it.
Nor can parliament complete the passage of a bill without the royal assent.
“sovereign legislation depends for its authority on (what Salmond calls) an ‘ultimate legal principle’, ie: a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be given. If no statute can establish the rule that the courts obey (the UK) parliament, similarly no statute can alter or abolish that rule. It is above and beyond the reach of statute…because it is itself the source of the authority of statute.”
In other words, the relationship between parliament, sovereign legislation and the courts of law in the United Kingdom is unalterable.
An attempt was made to bring these and other matters to court in 1971 by Raymond Blackburn who challenged the government’s right to join the common market on the grounds that it could only do so by surrendering sovereignty. A year later, Ross McWhirter invoked the Bill of Rights to show that the government did not have authority to give away the right and liberties of the people. Tragically, he was assassinated before the matter was decided. His brother Norris made a similar attempt to question the legality of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. Summonses were issued against the then Foreign Secretary for treason. The Attorney General used a purported power to take over the case and then drop it as “not in the public interest”. Yet the Bill of Rights prohibits “suspending laws or the operation of laws”. His action was also contrary to natural justice because the Attorney General was sitting in judgement in his own cause.
To accept that the only remedy lies with the body that perpetuates the abuse is to admit that there is no remedy. That must be wrong, both morally and constitutionally.
Summing up in the Court of Appeal, Lord Denning quoted the great 18th century Attorney, Sir Thomas Fuller:
“Be you never so high, the law is above you.”
Lord Denning added:
“When the Attorney General comes…and tells us that he has a prerogative by which he alone can say whether the criminal law can be enforced in these courts or not - then I say he has no such prerogative. He has no prerogative to suspend or dispense with the laws of England. If he does not give his consent, then any citizen of the land - any one of the public who is adversely affected - can come to this court and ask that the law be enforced.”
“The house as a whole may therefore be reassured that there is no question of this bill (The European Communities Bill 1972) making a thousand years of British law subservient to the Code Napoleon”.
Mr. Geoffrey Rippon, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Hansard, 15 Feb 1972. Pg.270.
“Our sovereignty cannot be bartered away by the Solicitor General, or even by the Prime Minister, because it is not theirs to give. I speak not only of the sovereignty of this house, but also of the higher sovereignty of the British people”.
Mr Alfred Morris MP. Hansard, 17 Feb 1972 Pg. 727-8.
Government statements made during the time of national debate on the question of the UK joining what became the EU can be described at the very least as deliberately misleading, and at worst as barefaced mendacity by ministers who had received expert legal advice to the contrary and knew the full facts:
“There is no reason to think that the impact of community law would weaken or destroy any of the basic rights and liberties of individuals under the law in the United Kingdom”.
The Lord High Chancellor, Command Paper 3301, 1967, on the constitutional implications of the UK joining the European Community.
“…no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty”
White Paper on joining the Common Market, issued by the Heath government in July 1971.
Three years later, writing in support of the “Yes” campaign in the 1975 referendum, Roy Jenkins was equally misleading:
“The position of the Queen is not affected. English Common Law is not affected.”
On the other hand, if the government’s statements of 1967 and 1971, and Roy Jenkins remarks of 1975, were correct, these statements now support our case for declaring that all EU legislation is unconstitutional in the UK and therefore null and void.
The inescapable fact is that successive governments have acted as if such statements and commitments did not exist. They have simply been ignored.
Which brings us to the trustworthiness and honesty of the elected representatives of the people, to whom they have a duty of care. Furthermore, a government which has introduced in less than three years a score of bills and Acts of Parliament which deal with various aspects of the constitution needs to be reminded that they have no right to exceed the powers vested in them. We, the people, own the rights to our own property - in this case Britain.
Every five years we might be said to ‘lease’ its care to ‘tenants’ (parliament) who have an obligation to look after our property and act in our best interests as the ultimate owners. Those same ‘tenants’ do not own the title to our deeds, nor any right of ownership over the property itself. They merely own the right of abode, and duty of care, for a maximum of five years. They are caretakers, if you like. They have no right to sign away those title deeds. They did not own them in the first place.
“In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right of both making and of enforcing laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and whenever these powers are united together, there can be no public liberty…. But where the legislative and executive authority are in distinct hands, the former will take care not to entrust the latter with so large a power, as may tend to the subversion of its own independence and therewith of the liberty of the subject. With us therefore, in England, this supreme power is divided into two branches; the legislative, to wit, the Parliament, consisting of the King, the Lords and the Commons; and the other, the executive consisting of the King alone”.
Blackstone (1723-1780) Commentaries on the Laws of England.
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
Benjamin Franklin
The EU arrest Warrant entered into force in January 2004 in eight EU member states - Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK. However, several other states have been very slow to adopt it.
Perhaps the President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus had a good reason that others are reluctant to give this power away, he said in October 03 that this bill would have made it possible for Czech citizens to be extradited to other EU countries to face trial. The Czech parliament has since accepted the EU Arrest warrant, so obviously it no longer cares about its rights top defend its citizens He is of course quite correct that that is the very reason for the bill in the first place. However Mr Klaus said that to pass such a bill would mean to hand over a part of the country’s sovereignty and its right to protect its citizens.
I do not know about the Czech government rights or otherwise in this matter, but I do know that the British government not only has the right to protect the Queens subjects, but it has a sworn duty to do so. A duty which by acceding to this international treaty it has refused to accept, we as British subjects can no longer rely on the our own government to protect us in the event that any Judge in any EU state issues a warrant for our arrest, our own police will execute that warrant with no evidence, and assist that foreign power to transport us to their own country to face charges in their courts under their rules. An added effect of this measure, will be to subject all extradition between the EU Member to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Thus further extending the powers of the union.
Tony Blair said “It is manifestly in this country’s interest to have a procedure that is a fast-track procedure for extraditing people to this country from European countries, what this will do is simplify the procedure enormously†he did not say that it would also seriously weaken the power of Parliament and the courts to protect the rights of British citizens and sweep away ancient rights as suspects would have no right to challenge extradition in their home country’s courts and would have no protection offered under our own laws. First they make us citizens of the EU then they make us subject to the laws of other countries then they ask us to pay our police to help them carry out these laws.
Although this law was introduced under the cover of terrorism it encompasses a great deal more than action against suspected terrorists, and there is no there is absolutely no guarantee that the European arrest warrant will not later be widened to other crimes or even abused, there is nothing preventing this. In fact as is usual with the EU method of introducing new developments “the nose of the camel approach†we the people are not told the full facts. This was based on a European Commission proposal, (document reference COM(2001)522 final/2). The agreement carries through the European Council conclusions of October 1999, in Tampere, which state that the formal extradition procedure should be abolished among the Member States. But of course what is really happening is the development of a single European judicial area. This can (as is the case in other areas) be used as a foundation to be built upon and extended later.
Treaty of Amsterdam created a space of freedom, of safety and of justice in the list of objectives of the Union; The Tampere European Council stated that “mutual recognition of judicial decisions and judgments … should become the cornerstone of judicial cooperation in both civil and criminal mattersâ€. Although these extradition agreements were supposedly to apply only to those who had been sentenced in their home courts and were fleeing justice, the Commission said that there was “no reason for distinguishing between situations in which extradition is requested at the pre-trial stage and those in which it is requested for the execution of an enforceable judgmentâ€. The basic idea is as follows: when a judicial authority of a Member State requests the surrender of a person, either because he has been convicted of an offence or because he is being prosecuted, its decision must be recognised and executed automatically throughout the Union. Refusal to execute a European arrest warrant must be confined to a limited number of hypotheses. The European arrest warrant is a warrant for search, arrest, detention and surrender to the judicial authority of the issuing country.
The principle of double criminal liability is abolished. It will hardly matter, therefore, if the offence for which the arrest warrant was issued does not exist, or that its components differ in the executing State. Under this principle each Member State not only recognises the entire criminal law of the other Member States but also agrees to assist them in enforcing it.
The added benefit is that a British subject may well find themselves arrested and extradited on one charge only for that charge to be dropped and then having to face other charges at the discretion of the judicial authority of the issuing country. “A person may be prosecuted, sentenced or detained for an offence other than that for which the European arrest warrant was issued.â€
Europa
The Warrant also in its present form includes tought Crimes such as “xenophobia and racism” a definition of either will be for the courts to decide but which courts? If for instance opinions expressed on the internet were considered offensive these could well be considered extraditable, although Britain has negotiated a deal under which the offences will only apply when they involve incitement to violence. We have been forced to concede a review after two years at which point the directive could be extended to and not just those likely to incite violence.
So our government which is sworn to defend the rights of the British people have reneged on their duty to us, do we therefore still owe a debt of allegiance our Monarch or are we the people now in the position of having no duty to the Queen because she has allowed our government to break our contract with her.
But why is it so very important that we retain the right to jury trial, why is Sir Robin wrong to suggest that Juries must have no right to acquit in defiance of the law or in disregard of the evidence, and to suggest that an accused may not be tried by a jury.
To insist on this, is in fact to remove the very basic reason for jury trials, because not only is the jury intended to try the facts of the case, as the peers of the accused they are also entitled, in fact impelled to try the legality of the law itself. Sir Robin being a professional lawyer has ignored the fact that laws made in this country must have the support of the people, and the only way to ensure that is the case, is to allow the jury not to convict if they feel the law itself is unjust.
That we are now being asked to give up the very basic rights to freedom and to hold our government to account, that we have held as a people for over 1000 years, to the powers of the government to do anything they wish, is an insult to the very foundation of the British peoples right to be governed by their own laws, they are our own laws because we accept them, and we enforce them, not the government, not the judges, but us the people have the final power to refuse to accept a law we feel is unjust by refusing to find someone guilty.
Essay on the Trial by Jury(1852) Lysander Spooner
The jury was an essential safeguard of liberty long before the American Revolution. British courts guaranteed the independence of criminal trial juries in 1670, in a case concerning four jurors who had acquitted William Penn for illegally preaching about his Quaker beliefs. Those jurors were imprisoned for their “not guilty” verdict because they had ignored the trial judge’s instructions to vote for Penn’s conviction. An English appellate court released the jurors from prison, establishing the principle that juries cannot be punished for bringing in the “wrong” verdict. The freedom of American jurors to vote according to conscience can be traced to that landmark precedent. The purpose of trial by jury, as the Supreme Court itself has noted, is to prevent “oppression by the government.” To perform that role, jurors must act independently and conscientiously, and they must be prepared to “just say no” if they believe that a conviction would be unjust
Jurors in early America knew that if a criminal law was unjust, they could — and should — refuse to enforce it. They could vote their conscience, and as free citizens they were expected to do so. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” John Adams said, “It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty . . . to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”
“The trial by jury,†then, is a “trial by the country†—that is by the people as distinguished from a trial the government
The object of this trial “by the country,†or by the people, in preference to a trial by the government, is to guard against every species of oppression by the government. In order to effect this end, it is indispensable that the people, or “the country,†judge of and determine their own liberties against the government; instead of the government’s judging of and determining its own powers over the people. How is it possible that juries can do anything to protect the liberties of the people against the government; if they are not allowed to determine what those liberties are?
Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other — or at least no more accurate — definition of a despotism than this.
The Amsterdam Treaty
There is in Article 209a, a one-line statement that “such measures shall not concern the application of national criminal law and the national administration of justiceâ€.
The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, during the Amsterdam treaty debate, told British MPs that it was relying entirely on this safeguard to stop Corpus Juris.
However, on 11 February 1998, in a report presented to the EU Parliament by Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs, M. Bontempi, described quite clearly and exactly how they intend to get round this statement. “if the matter is disputed it will be sent for adjudication by the European Court of Justice, where Britain has no national vetoâ€.
Now how might they actually do this to be fair “ such measures shall not concern the application of national criminal law and the national administration of justice†is pretty clear and not in the least ambivalent.
But the ECJ is not a court in the true sense of the word it is supposed to rule on the treaties which it does and nine times out of 10 it rules in favour of the EU and further integration. It takes its remit from the Preamble of the treaties “closer union†this it takes as the pure guiding light behind all the treaties that they are the evidence of the clear wish of the member states ambition to achieve ever closer unity.
The court would look at the legal obligations Britain had entered into when ratifying the treaty; this is argued quit clearly in the report “Ratification Bottleneckâ€
The Principal of good faith
Once a treaty has been signed the state must abstain from any conduct that could compromise full application of the treaty once it has entered into force. It is also argued that