ARBITRARY LAW AND POWER IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Dateline: 2lst October 1999

The BSE problem turned into a trade war simply because France has broken the European law which they insist applies to everyone else. Germany has done the same in its demands that for instance Britain extradites its citizens to Germany while they prohibit the extradition of Germans here. Germany's Constitutional Court broke the Maastricht Treaty by insisting that they (like Britain) had an opt out from the Single Currency. Germany refuses to extradite Germans but demands through European conventions the other European countries extradite their citizens to Germany. None of this surprises the democratic forces in Britain resisting the arbitrary law of the new European Superstate.

The concepts of democracy, rule of law, free trade, division of powers, habeas corpus, trial by jury and much else are of course regarded by most on the Continent of Europe as part of the hated "Anglo-Saxon world order".

Their incomprehension of the British regard for the rule of law was well illustrated when a European Court of Justice official told an American journalist:

"Britain has an almost depersonalised concept of the law in that they blindly obey the law even when it does not suit them politically. Almost nobody else in the world does that and certainly no other member states do".