Trouble ahead for Bottler Brown

More trouble ahead for the Great Clunking Fist, it would appear that The European Scrutiny Committee (see below for details) is about to report that "The EU reform treaty is equivalent in substance and effect to the old EU constitution...(and)..."will also raise doubts about the safety of Britain's "red lines"."

"The annexe at the back of the report will list 440 clauses of the old constitution and demonstrate how similar they are to sections of the new treaty." This sort of exercise has been carried out by several Euro-aware bodies and rubbished by the Government, this time the report is from a Government Committee with a Labour majority.


Some more news from the Telegraph report "At a hearing last week, the committee's MPs were surprised to learn from Jim Murphy, minister for Europe, that Britain was given just 48 hours' notice of the details in the treaty before being asked to agree to it."

I do not know why the Committee members were surprised, this is how the EU does business.


More from that Telegraph report "It has also emerged that Eurojust, the European Union crime-fighting body, is seeking new powers to freeze property and goods and gain access to British police databases in next week's controversial EU reform treaty...It now wants to be given powers to issue arrest warrants, seize goods and order prosecutions. A position paper, seen by The Daily Telegraph, proposes that Eurojust, made up of prosecutors, magistrates and senior police officers from each EU member state, is ready to assume the role of a European public prosecutor."

The EU wants ever more power, the EU Constitution (now renamed) is not the end game but just another step to a single Union. The clue is in the name European Union.


Final extract from the Telegraph report "It also emerged that under in the new treaty the European Court of Justice will have full jurisdiction over EU criminal justice agreements, which they currently do not have."

As above... We need a referendum and we need it soon. Maybe a two question referendum is needed, one on the Treaty and one on staying in Europe.






"The European Scrutiny Committee assesses the legal and/or political importance of each EU document (about 1,100 per year) and decides which are debated. The Committee receives an Explanatory Memorandum on each document from the relevant Minister. All documents deemed politically or legally important are discussed in the Committee's weekly Reports.

Debates recommended by the Committee take place either in a European Standing Committee or (more rarely) on the Floor of the House. Under the scrutiny reserve resolution passed by the House, Ministers should not agree to proposals which the Committee has not cleared or which are waiting for debate.

The Committee also monitors the activities of UK Ministers in the Council (through parliamentary questions and sometimes by questioning Ministers in person), and sometimes conducts general inquiries into legal, procedural or institutional developments in the EU. The Committee is appointed under Standing Order No. 143 and has 16 members."

The above is per UK Parliament website.