(Filed: 29/08/2006)



      The European Union is a solution in search of a problem. Whatever the question, the answer is invariably "more Europe". War in Lebanon? We need to be able to deploy an EU army. A breakdown in the World Trade Organisation talks? Let's have a more integrated European economy. People voted against the constitution? They obviously thought it didn't go far enough.

      So it was more or less inevitable that Brussels would respond to the recent security alert by awarding itself new powers. And, sure enough, John Reid and his fellow interior ministers have rushed to announce the further harmonisation of aviation and policing. Never mind that the liquid bomb plot was thwarted by the system currently in place. Never mind that, as far as we can tell, the countries chiefly involved were Britain, Pakistan and the United States, and that collaboration among the intelligence agencies of these three states would be unaffected by any new EU rules. An emergency Euro-summit is always a handy way to look as if you're doing something.

      Oh, come off it, Hannan, I hear you say. Even you Euro-phobes must accept that there are some things that we ought to do together. I mean, if the terrorists are operating at an international level, don't we need to take them on at an international level?

      Yes, indeed - and we have been doing so for decades without any help from Brussels. Sovereign states have evolved highly developed mechanisms for police and judicial co-operation: the Hague Convention, extradition treaties, intelligence sharing, Interpol, mutual recognition of court orders, acknowledgement of sentences spent in each other's prisons.

      What is being proposed now, in effect, is that such collaboration should principally be administered by the EU. I don't know about you, but this doesn't make me feel any safer. It is these same Euro-apparatchiks, after all, who have brought us the Common Agricultural Policy, the destruction of North Sea fish stocks, and accounts that have not been approved in 12 consecutive years. Why should they be any better at thwarting bombers than they are at, say, thwarting fraudsters within their own bureaucracy?

      Actually, the question is no longer putative: we can assess the EU's efficacy as a counter-terrorist organisation on the basis of empirical evidence. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, there was a massive extension of EU jurisdiction in the home affairs field: common rules on immigration and visas; a European Public Prosecutor; harmonised court procedures; extra powers for Europol (which the EU artlessly refers to as "the embryonic federal police force"); and a unified list of designated terrorist organisations, with agreed procedures on police surveillance and asset seizures. There was even a new category of "crimes against the Union", to be tried, not within national jurisdictions, but under the legal authority of the EU itself.

      And let's not forget the European arrest warrant (EAW), which contains even fewer safeguards than the Anglo-American extradition treaty that has got everyone so hot under the collar: it provides only for a preliminary hearing to establish that the person in custody is the person named on the court order, that he is above the age of criminal liability, and that he has not already been tried for the offence. No need for any actual evidence whatever. Yet there were no marches of pin-striped financiers against the EAW, no fulminating newspaper columns, no complaints by headline-grabbing MPs. And why not? Because, I put it to you, no one wanted to appear soft on terrorism.

      In fact, the EU's home affairs agenda was never about taking on the jihadists; if it had been, Brussels would long ago have listed Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation. The idea, rather, was to create a single juridical entity. Euro-integrationists wanted the EU to assume the key attributes of statehood: defined external borders; common rules on who might cross them; a criminal justice system and supreme court; police and security forces; and the right to deal as a sovereign entity with other states. Although there was some movement towards these goals at the Tampere summit in 1998, it was the World Trade Centre massacre that gave the federalists their break. All they had to do was re-label their schemes as "security measures" and no one would dare to vote against them. As the leader of the European Liberals, a British Lib-Dem called Graham Watson, put it: "Osama bin Laden has done more for European integration than anyone since Jacques Delors." Tasteless, Graham, but true.

      Five years on, it is hard to identify a single anti-terrorist success that can be attributed to Brussels. On the other hand, we have just won a mighty victory through old-fashioned police co-operation between three countries which, although on different continents, are united by language, history and law. Why should such joint operations be improved by bringing Britain's procedures into line with Europe, rather than the Anglosphere?

      For Euro-enthusiasts, of course, the question is irrelevant. Indeed, at the very moment that Brussels was pushing through the EAW, it was seeking to ban extradition to the US on the grounds that suspects might face the death penalty there. No, Eurocrats were not responding to an identified terrorist menace. Rather, they were starting from their conclusion - a united Europe - and then casting around for arguments to get there.

      This is nothing new, of course. Every federalist departure is presented to the electorates as a remedy to some existing problem. The euro was meant to be all about making the single market work better. The common defence policy was sold as a way of bolstering Nato. What is new is the scope of the EU's ambition. The powers it is now annexing have always been internal to nation states: that is why we call them "home affairs". Willie Whitelaw used to tell his successors at the Home Office: "This is the easiest job in Cabinet: you never have to deal with foreigners." Not any more.

      In a spasm of thoughtlessness, or perhaps of fear, we are giving Brussels control over matters that are central to the relationship between government and citizen. At the same time, we are tossing away the notion of territorial jurisdiction which is perhaps the supreme safeguard of national sovereignty.

      "Europe - Your Country," say the signs at the European Commission. It soon will be.


The Daily Telegraph