EU overturns law
EU The Truth

Can the European Union overturn laws made in this country?

YES.
A specific example was the legislation by the UK Parliament to prevent Spanish fishermen sailing under the British flag and so taking a quota of fishing rights allocated to the UK by the EU. The Fisheries Act passed both the House of Commons and House of Lords and was signed into law by the Queen in person. But, as the late Lord Tonypandy recalls "The politically motivated European Court of Justice instructed us that our Fisheries Act was illegal. They defined limits on what our Parliament could legislate. Our Westminster Parliament was humiliatingly put behind the European Union. As a further measure of contempt for Westminster, Europe proceeded to give the bullying Spanish fishermen authority to demand compensation for the period that our Privy Council, and our Parliament, by our legislation, kept them out of our waters."

[ Lord Tonypandy of Rhondda, Speaker of the House of Commons 1976-1983, Video address to the Referendum Party Conference, Brighton, 19 October 1996.]

This direct interference in British law making is wholly contrary to the British constitution, under which it is understood that "Parliament ... has ... the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognized by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament."

[This commonly accepted definition of the Doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty is that given by Professor A.V. Dicey in 1885. See Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, 10th ed.(1959) at 67-8 In Scotland, constitutionalists point out that the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath vests sovereignty in "the people." While there is a valid debate over whether the English concept of Parliamentary Sovereignty is applicable in Scotland, it is clear that neither the Scots nor the English constitutional tradition allows for the transfer of sovereignty to a supranational body such as the EU.]

Is it true that the EU plans to abolish Trials by Jury?

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Amsterdam Treaty was its provisions for the legal system known as Corpus Juris to be introduced throughout the EU. (Corpus Juris can be introduced by Qualified Majority Voting, so the EU can introduce it even if we were to refuse it by a 100% majority in Westminster.)

[Section II, Chapter 8, heading (d): "Measures for countering fraud against the financial interests of the Community"]

Corpus Juris will set up a European Public Prosecutor with over-riding criminal law jurisdiction throughout Europe, initially on matters of fraud against the EU budget, later to be extended to all criminal activities, which will thus come within the EU purview.

Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury - rights enjoyed by Britons since Magna Carta - are explicitly to be abolished under these proposals.

[ The proposals are being drawn up by EU Commission (XX DG) which details an EU criminal code and code of procedure. Article 26.1 explicitly provides for cases (where the sentence can be up to seven years) to be heard by Courts "consisting of professional judges, excluding simple jurors and lay magistrates."]

The implications of this proposal cannot be overemphasised. As Churchill wrote

"...the great principle of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury ... are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments."
[ Winston Churchill, minute to the Home Secretary, 21 November 1943]

The obligation to conform to the requirements of the Amsterdam Treaty explains the Government's determination to press ahead with the abolition of the right to Trial by Jury for certain offences, despite defeat in the House of Lords and widespread opposition from lawyers and civil rights groups.

Return to archives