Whose law shall prevail?

On its way to the USA

[Reprinted from Issues & Views December 10, 2001]

As Europe's countries merge into a single entity, the possibilities for control over all European citizens are endless. In his column, "Say Goodbye to England," Paul Craig Roberts reflects on the impact of the European Union on British law:

Britain is on its way back to the reign of Charles I, with its secret courts and imprisonment without trial or evidence. Once-proud Brits are suffering the indignity of being gradually brought under European law by ministerial edicts that bypass Parliament. Recently the British lost their ancient system of weights and measures, but now they are on the verge of losing their legal system, the development of which is, essentially, the history of Britain.

Although willing to be bullied along the path to European integration, the British steadfastly have held on to their justice system. And for good reason. Historically, English law has been a shield of the people, standing in stark contrast to Europe's Napoleonic criminal law, which does not safeguard law against its use by government as a weapon.

The "Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill" currently moving through Parliament contains a provision (109) that removes Parliament from the decision to replace English law with Europe's Corpus Juris. Unless Parliament rejects this provision, the EU Council of Ministers in Brussels, with the concurrence of the British Home Secretary, can vote away English legal protections and replace Habeas Corpus with Napoleon's code. The British also face the unpleasant prospect of being tried by European prosecutors for offenses that are not crimes in Britain.

Are the British people so smitten by Europe that they would give up their historic achievements and replace "law as shield" with "law as weapon"?

Here's more from the Guardian, where we learn about a proposal to create a European database (under the direction of the European Union) that would retain the names of individuals who have been known to engage in protest demonstrations. Although the proposal claims interest in impeding supposedly "violent" or "potentially dangerous" dissidents, there is always the question of who gets to define such terms.

The new dedicated database covering protesters with a record of violence or public disorder is part of a planned extension of the Schengen Information System (SIS) based in Strasbourg which already holds files on 1.3 million individuals--mainly for immigration purposes--and can be accessed from 50,000 computer terminals around Europe.

The anti-protest proposal has been put forward by Belgium, which currently holds the EU presidency. It would allow EU countries to bar an individual from going to a specific event on the grounds that such a ban would reduce the risk of public disorder.

The Belgian paper says the list could work by "alerts" being flagged on the Schengen information system on any person who is "notoriously known by the police forces for having committed recognised facts of public order disturbance" when they are moving alone or in a group to a specific event, if there is evidence they are out to "organise, cause, participate in or foment trouble with the aim of threatening public order or security." The kind of events from which they are to be barred includes sporting, cultural, political and social occasions.

And from a Telegraph editorial of December 8, we learn that the House of Lords has voted against the very measures that intrude on English sovereignty mentioned above by Paul Craig Roberts:

On Thursday night, peers of all parties defeated the Government on no fewer than seven measures in its Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill. These are the clauses that the Government was seeking to sneak through Parliament under cover of the present emergency, with the aim of increasing the powers of the state at the expense of Parliament and the freedom of the individual.

If the Bill had confined itself to attacking terrorism, then nobody would have objected to it. But instead the Government sought, with only a few minutes set aside for debate, to introduce a whole range of illiberal measures that had no connection with the events of September 11.

Worst of all, it sought to introduce a Europe-wide criminal justice system by secondary legislation, which would have allowed people to be arrested in Britain for things done abroad that are perfectly legal here. The Bill would also have allowed foreign authorities to lay down penalties for crimes committed on British soil. All this violated one of the central tenets of the Maastricht Treaty, which was that justice and home affairs should be outside the direct control of the European institutions.

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