UK won't loose veto on EU crime policy
The UK retains a veto over EU-wide crime policy
Tuesday, 05, Jun 2007 12:00
Tony Blair appears to have responded to a warning from MPs not to forsake the UK's veto on EU-wide crime policy.
A Commons home affairs select committee had rushed forward the publication of their report in order to prevent Blair renouncing the power at an EU summit later this month.
Unlike many EU states, the UK does not require parliamentary approval for decisions it makes at summits, regardless of how far-reaching their consequences may be.
John Denham, the committee chairman, said he had asked the government what the prime minister intended to do but received no answer.
'It has not been easy for us to discover what the government's position is,' he said. 'We don't know what it is.
"We wanted to get our report out ahead of the summit so that parliament could have an input into the discussions.'
But this afternoon the prime minister's official spokesman reported Britain would lobby to keep the veto and "retain control" of its law and order policy.
Current EU law states that EU-wide judicial reforms must be agreed unanimously by all member states, leading to a sluggish pace of change.
The EU constitution, which was definitively rejected by Dutch and French voters, attempted to replace the rule with a qualified majority voting (QMV) model whereby no state holds a veto but voting weight is influenced by a country's size.
It is this model that many EU states plan to resurrect at this month's summit on June 21.
But the UK, Republic of Ireland and Germany are all opposing the change, while most pro-Europeans support it.
They argue that now the EU consists of 27 member states it will be next to impossible to reach unanimous decisions and EU policy-making will grind to a halt; all at a time when organised crime and terrorism are demanding sustained attention.
Should the veto be scrapped, the issues on which Britain may well be outvoted include hot-pursuit powers for cross-border police activities, courts procedures and data sharing.
The Commons committee disagrees. In its report, Justice and Home Affairs issues at European Union level, it argued that "such a change would be of great significance' and should only be agreed with full parliamentary approval.
It said: "The evidence we have seen does not persuade us that, as things stand at present, there are sufficient benefits in terms of tackling crime, either here in the UK or across the EU, to justify such a major transfer of power away from individual member states."
It claimed the EU would gain more from concentrating on increased cooperation between police, judiciaries and crime agencies.
The government's announcement that it will lobby to retain the veto does not mark a change in policy.
But the fact that the publication of the select committee's report forced the prime minister's spokesman to announce his intentions will be seen as a climb down in the face of pressure from the influential group of MPs.