WHY NO TREATY LIMITING EU POWERS CAN BE RELIED ON As the British Government prepares to ratify the revived [EU] Constitution WITHOUT its PROMISED REFERENDUM , claiming its "RED LINES" will "PROTECT" UK interests, a leading barrister describes the role of the EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE -in expanding the POWERS of the EU by Martin Howe QC eurofacts - November-2007 eurofacts@junepress.com What is the key feature that makes the Treaty of Rome different in kind from every other INTERNATIONAL TREATY to which this country belongs, and quite possibly makes it unique in the world? To this question, a lawyer can give only one answer: -the key feature is COMMUNITY LAW -a system of law that penetrates inside the Member States and takes precedence over National Laws in the domestic courts of the member states. Many treaties bind states with rules at international or external level - but it is this internal penetration is a classic characteristic, NOT OF
INTERNATIONAL TREATIES -but of the internal CONSTITUTIONAL arrangements of FEDERAL STATES and like a federal state, the European Union has its own SUPREME COURT the European Court of Justice, which has the ultimate power of decision over both the CONTENT and the SCOPE of COMMUNITY LAW. Profound Changes. This court is not a neutral or impartial interpreter of the rules. The perspective of looking back over 50 years allows us to see clearly how profoundly the Treaty of Rome has been changed from what it was in 1957. I am not speaking here of the many changes to its text which have been made by successive amending treaties such as:
The Single European Act Maastricht or
Nice. I am talking of the profound changes in the effective content of the [New EU] TREATY which have occurred as a result of a PROCESS of so-called "INTERPRETATION" of the TREATY by the COURT [European Court of Justice] The key point that the treaty articles have direct effect inside member states IS NO WHERE STATED IN THE TREATY but decided by the European Court in the Van Gend en Loos case in 1963, it said: " The treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the contracting states. This view is confirmed by the preamble to the Treaty which refers not only to governments but to peoples. the Community constitutes a new legal order in international law for whose benefit the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only the Member States but also their nationals". Sovereign Rights Shortly afterwards in 1964 in the Costa v ENEL case, the Court ruled that Community law over-rides conflicting national laws: " The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of rights and obligations arising under the treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights...." By 1970, in Internationale Handelsgellschaft, the European Court [of Justice] had declared its view that
COMMUNITY LAW should take precedence even over the CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS of the MEMBER STATES. -including basic entrenched laws guaranteeing FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS In the 1987 Foto-Frost case, the European Court [of Justice] ruled that NATIONAL COURTS had no power to question the validity of Community measures and reserved that POWER exclusively to ITSELF [European Court of Justice] even though there is nothing in the Treaty or in general principles of International Law which would require STATES to recognise the validity of acts which are outside the powers conferred by the Treaty. During the early period of the common market, free market economists would have approved of the court's activism in the field of free movement of goods. BUT this activism became a
POISONED CHALICE since the Court made clear that it regarded a
European free market not as an end in itself, but simply a means to a greater end. [Was this not true with ADOLF HITLER in the 30's and many dictators since to put their own interpretation on matters which deal with accumulating more POWER to enslave a PEOPLE] Concrete Progress The [ECJ] court spelled out its thinking in 1992 in the European Economic Area Agreement Case: "An international treaty is to be interpreted not only on the basis of its wording, but in the light of its objectives. The Rome Treaty aims to achieve economic integration leading to the establishment of an internal market and economic and monetary union. Article 1 of the Single European Act makes it clear that the objective of all the Community treaties is to contribute together to making concrete progress towards European unity. it follows from the foregoing that the provisions of the Rome Treaty on free movement and competition, far from being an end in themselves, are only means for attaining those objectives. ...As the Court of Justice has consistently held, the Community treaties established a new legal order for the benefit of which States have limited their sovereign rights, in ever wider fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only the member States but also their nationals. [emphasis added]" In the last sentence, the important change in wording from the 1963 Van Gend case should be noted. By 1992 "limited fields" had become "ever wider fields", reflecting the Court's endorsement of the doctrine that there can only ever be one-way transfer of powers from the member states to the centre. The Court has also expanded the powers of the Community over the external relations of the member states. It has developed a doctrine of implied external competence - that the Community has power to make external agreements relating to fields over which it has acquired internal competence. Furthermore, under this doctrine, the member states lose their own powers to conclude international agreements relating to areas of policy which the Community has attained an internal competence. Under the doctrine, in 2002 the Bermuda Agreement between the UK and the US relating to trans-Atlantic air transport was struck down. British Airways at the time welcomed the fact that such arrangements would be negotiated by the EU rather than bilaterally [Than between the US and Britain]. In 2007 British Airways had cause to regret bits earlier stance when the EU negotiated an agreement with the US on our behalf which failed to protect our national interests. Whilst the Court has liberalised the internal market, it has often used its growing powers over external trade of the member states in a way which inhibits the liberalisation of trade across the external borders of the EC. In 1998 Silhouette case , it interpreted the Trade Marks Directive as requiring member states to prohibit so-called "parallel imports" of genuine trade marked goods from non-member states when the proprietor of the mark has not consented to the marketing of his goods within the Community. This enables trade mark proprietors to prevent the importation of their own genuine goods into the EC from other countries where they have placed them on the market (e.g. the USA), so enabling them to charge consumers within the EC a higher price than in other markets. Similarly, in the field of regulations and technical standards, the Court has ruled in the 1999 Agrochemicals case that the UK is prohibited by Community law from licensing "parallel imports" from non-EC countries, even though the products are identical to agrochemicals licensed inside the EC and made by the same manufacturer The economic rationale of the "fortress Europe" mentality is baffling, and cuts against our global trade obligations under the WTO Agreement on Technical barriers to Trade.
Onward Progress
Where the onward progress of European integration has been
blocked by national vetoes, the Court [European Court of Justice] has
been willing to
re-interpret the Treaty
-to make up for the lack of progress on the legislative
front. In a whole series of tax cases, the Court has invoked the general
clauses of the Treaty on non-discrimination to strike down
National Tax legislation
An important example is the 2002 Lankhorst-Hohorst case
on tax credits on payments to a subsidiary to its parent in another member
state. What is significant is that the Court departed from earlier cases
which had decided that such arrangements were compatible with the Treaty.
[As we now know the ECoJ is a slippery
entity which changes its direction to fit the up to now hidden agenda of
complete subjugation of member states to the Court.]
THE TREATY HAD NOT CHANGED
BUT ITS MEANING
-according to the Court
HAD Thus, the
effective harmonisation of direct taxes proceeds step by step at the hands
of the Court despite the UK's theoretical veto on this area under the
Treaty. More recently in the 2005
environmental protection case, the Court decided that the EC can, under its
first pillar supranational law-making
powers specify and impose
criminal offences and penalties in the very wide fields where the EC has an
existing competence. The remarkable thing about this decision is that, if it
is right, the EEC had these powers over the criminal law from the day the
Treaty of Rome
was signed on 25th March 1957.
[Well! Edward Heath in 1970 asked his
Lord Chancellor Lord Kilmuir whether the sovereignty of Parliament would be put at risk and
he was informed by letter that that was the case.]
Yet if this had been suggested to those who signed Britain's
Accession Treaty in 1972,
they would have laughed.
We see, with the perspective of 50 years, how powerful
has been the effect of the rolling process of re-interpretation of the
TREATY of ROME
carried out by the Court
[EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE?]
over that period.
What conclusion should we draw from this? If we believe that it is right to halt or reverse the ongoing process of the transfer of powers from the UK to the European institutions, then we should recognise a simple point. We saw how the so-called Social Chapter opt-out negotiated at Maastricht was rapidly undermined by the abuse of health and safety powers under the Treaty to by-pass the UK's veto on the Working Time Directive. This abuse of the Treaty was of course sanctioned by the [European Court of Justice] Court.
If we remain subject to Community law, and to the European Court's interpretation of the Treaties, no agreement or treaty defining or limiting the
POWERS of EUROPE
can be safely relied upon - simply because it will be re-interpretated by the Court, over time, to expand those powers again
* [IN OTHER WORDS it is an insatiable wayward devourer of FREE CHOICE and FREE ECONOMY and most of all FREEDOM] * Martin Howe QC , Is a barrister specialising in intellectual property and commerce with unrivalled practical experience of EU law and the EU legal order. *
[Font Altered-Bolding & Underlining Used-Comments in
Brackets] * [This legal endorsement of what the NEW EU TREATY really MEANS will blow the whistle on the deceitful GOVERNMENT and their supporters for a grotesque foul which the article reveals of those who continually state that so-called "red lines" will protect our Rights and Liberties and NATIONHOOD. As we have said over the past twelve years the choice is simple and can be quoted in three words FREEDOM or SLAVERY. The author of the above article has been an active eurosceptic for many years and his recondite and acute legal mind has given many learned treatises to the CAUSE.] * * *
A LAMENT OF THE DEMISE OF A ONCE PROUD AND JUST NATION STATE Unless the English people immediately grasp the danger to their existence as a FREE island people they will shortly be tied to the whims of the European Court of Justice which will decide the future of a once proud and freedom loving people who settled in an island home which became England. How far we have fallen since we arrived in our home in Britain over 1400 years ago. It had been a
source of much pride that the tribes that crossed the seas from their
European homeland had because of their island isolation developed a unique
way-of-life and love of freedom that many
centuries later led the world in parliamentary democracy which has been a
torch of freedom which many countries in their own way have travelled. Today
in 2007 it appears that the English are prepared to ignore their special
qualities which have made their race a freedom loving and just nation and a
stubborn people which
in its long history the world has seen its nation's blood freely given in
the support of freedom in all parts of the world. In a United States of
Europe there will be no place for a people who have a practical sense of
what is right and just and instead will have to be what the European Court
of Justice consider the European and not the English way.
In the words of our great war leader Winston Churchill:
"We are with
Europe but not of it .
We are linked,
but not combined.
We are
interested and associated, but not absorbed".
so why do our leaders insist on neutering us for all time by
forcing us to embrace an unaccountable corrupt, soviet style police state of
a United States of Europe which is alien to our natural instincts as General
de Gaulle so aptly stated in 1963 when he vetoed our entry into the EEC
WHY de Gaulle VETOED OUR EEC MEMBERSHIP IN 1963
and his words were true then as
they are today in November 2007. But the greater number of our
politicians are not the least interested in THE TRUTH as we have
all found out to our cost over the past 40 years.]
*
The
Spirit of England - Churchill in London -
St
George’s Day-1953.
*
An
excerpt from Sir Winston Churchill’s broadcast speech to the Honourable
Artillery Company, given in London 40 years ago-
on
St. George’s Day,
*
THIS ENGLAND
Publication -Spring-1993.
* [Font Altered-Bolding & Underlining Used-Comment in Brackets]
*
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THE PEOPLE HAVE
SPOKEN-IS THE EU COMMISSION LISTENING?
*
Ditch the EU TREATY after IRISH
REJECTION
SAY VOTERS
by
Daniel Martin
Political Reporter
[Daily Mail-Wednesday, June 18,2008]
MORE THAN HALF of voters believe Britain should drop
the controversial European Treaty in the wake of its rejection in
last week's
IRISH REFERENDUM'
The poll comes as the Tories launch a last-ditch bid
in the
HOUSE of LORDS
today to delay the
RATIFICATION OF THE
TREATY.
And
10,000 people
have signed a
PETITION
on the
DOWNING STREET-
WEBSITE
within the past few days
JUNE16-2008
, calling on the
GOVERNMENT
NOT TO RATIFY THE BILL
[WHY DON'T YOU?]
Downing Street website
is
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Abandon-Lisbon/
*
JUNE 18-2008
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