Daily Mail, December 13 2001

The last faint hope that plans to introduce an EU-wide arrest warrant might be aborted has now disappeared. Under massive pressure, the Italians have been forced to lift their veto which threatened to scupper the plan.

The way is now clear for the European heads of state to agree at their summit in Laeken, Belgium on Friday to introduce a measure which throws natural justice, the elementary protection of liberty and the fundamental principles of English common law onto the trash heap. Needless to say, the British government is gung-ho for the idea.

The warrant will mean that a European country such as, say, Spain can have a British citizen arrested in Britain for making a xenophobic remark, removed from his own country and, with no evidence ever having been presented, flung into a Spanish jail to await trial for an activity which the British don’t even recognise as a crime.

This monstrous idea looked like an EU shoo-in until Italy threatened to throw a spanner in the works. Were the Italians, at the eleventh hour, reminding 0us of distantly remembered notions of the rule of law and democracy– and, er, human rights – all of which the EU is steamrollering into the ground under the remorseless advance of ever-closer union?

Alas, the truth was rather less elevated. Italy wanted the list of crimes which might trigger the EU arrest warrant drastically reduced from some 32 to six in order to exclude financial offences. It was widely thought that the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, feared he might be extradited to Spain where he has been named in fraud inquiries.

Now, however, Berlusconi has caved in after having had his arms twisted behind his back by Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian prime minister who holds the rotating EU presidency.

The arrest warrant is being presented as a vital element of the war against terrorism. But the events of September 11 are being used as a means of silencing opposition to a proposal which should cause the widest possible alarm.

For the intention behind it, which dates back at least as far as 1999, is to create a ‘corpus juris’, a European body of criminal law. In addition to introducing the arrest warrant, EU justice ministers have now also agreed to agreed to establish a body of magistrates to encourage ‘judicial co-operation’ across the EU.

Such a Europe-wide legal concept is an essential element of the single European state which is being relentlessly created but whose threat to British self-government is even now denied by the politicians who are dismantling our national institutions.

The arrest warrant replaces the principles of English common law by the inquisitorial Napoleonic code which underpins the continental justice system. Down this road of corpus juris lie European public prosecutors and the end of trial by jury.

Slice by salami slice, the EU is steadily removing the power of the British people to live in accordance with those ancient principles of law, justice and liberty which are rooted in our culture.

Of course European states need to co-operate with each other over terrorism. But co-operation does not have to entail the destruction of independent legal systems. And in any event, the EU arrest warrant is only marginally concerned with terrorism.

The crimes for which it can be issued include corruption, fraud, counterfeiting the euro, computer crime, racism and xenophobia. Many crimes on the list are relatively trivial, such as trafficking in endangered animals or plants.

No doubt the current extradition law needs reform. But the way this arrest warrant will operate is profoundly unjust. The requesting country will not have to present any evidence for a well-founded case. The British courts will have no option but to approve the request by a Greek or Spanish judge to lock up someone in a foreign jail.

Once abroad, the suspect could find himself facing trial for a different crime altogether; or he may even be extradited merely for questioning. Cheerio habeas corpus. Far from being the bedrock of our protection against the use of arbitrary and oppressive authority, our courts will be turned into rubber stamps for judicial kidnapping by foreign powers.

The British government airily brushes away such concerns on the grounds that since all EU countries have signed the European Convention on Human Rights, there can’t be any problem. But far from ushering in a utopia of perfect justice, this convention, like Humpty Dumpty’s words, means precisely what each country wants it to mean, no more or less.

Indeed, some European countries which have signed it show scant regard for liberty or justice. The plane spotters incarcerated in Greece illustrate that the convention doesn’t stop flagrant abuses of human rights. France is also notorious for jailing people for years before bringing them to trial.

Such practices are sanctioned by judges. But since these may also double up as the investigator and prosecutor intent on catching criminals, such ostensible judicial safeguards are meaningless. As the former French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn said after he had been acquitted of corruption, in the French legal system ‘you are seen as guilty from the moment the judicial system is interested in you’.

Even worse, some crimes on the list such as fraud are interpreted differently from country to country. In Britain, the crime of fraud entails an intention to defraud; in other European countries, it can extend to careless error. So someone who had made a genuine financial mistake could find himself extradited to a European country to be tried as a criminal.

Worse still, people might be extradited for behaviour the British don’t recognise as crimes at all, such as xenophobia or racism. These are utterly subjective concepts, and have even become ideological weapons. It is also oppressive and wrong for a country to yield up someone for trial for behaviour it doesn’t itself treat as a crime.

Worse still again, some leading lawyers believe that the warrant will allow extradition for crimes committed in Britain. So the editor of the Sun, for example, might find himself in a French or German jail for printing remarks about ‘Frogs’ or ‘Huns’.

Nor is this all. The EU is also proposing to widen the definition of terrorism to acts ‘seriously affecting the political, economic or social structures of a country or an organisation governed by public international law’. So merely leafleting for a demonstration against multinational companies might be construed as terrorism -- triggering arrest and extradition by the stroke of a continental pen.

It defies belief that a British government should be so gung-ho to destroy British liberty in this way. This, though, is what European integration really means. Yet those who point out the reality of the federal project are routinely vilified as xenophobes.

No doubt, therefore, the EU arrest warrant will ensure that legions of euro-sceptics are dragged off in handcuffs to be tried for such a thought-crime by the judicial hit-squads of the new world order.