Does the EU improve UK security and safety?
No!. Why does any country need to be part of the EU to be able to cooperate on crime data?
The UK is part of NATO. NATO has kept military security in Europe long before the EU.
EU laws allow anybody with an EU passport to come to the UK. The UK has enough home grown Jihadis, criminals, professional beggars and others intent on taking advantage of UK freedom and tolerance for personal gain.
EU laws hinder and even prevent removal of non-EU criminals.
EU laws hinder and prevent removal of those intent on colonising the UK to further objectives and life styles that are incompatible with UK freedom and democracy.
But I have heard that the courts can prevent extradition if the accused person’s human rights are at risk?
Theoretically that may be the case but in practice it does not work. All EU Member States have signed the European Convention on Human Rights. The English court will take the view that because EU member states have signed the Convention then under the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ they cannot then be deemed to be in breach of it – even if all the known facts contradict this.
For example it is well known that countries such as Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and others, are frequently in breach of the Convention, because of their institutionalised corruption or because of the conditions in their prisons; nevertheless suspects will be ‘judicially surrendered’ in spite of this. The author has been present in the English appeal court where such judgements have been made.
Don’t we need to be in the European Union to help protect us from organized crime and terrorists?
The EU’s open borders policy has put us at more risk from criminals and terrorists. Open borders has meant that Europe’s criminals have migrated to where they think they can most lucratively operate, and that means countries like Britain. The EU’s Freedom of Movement Directive (Directive 2004/38. Article 27 (2) ) says that ‘previous criminal convictions are not enough to justify exclusion’. So even if we know someone to be a criminal we have no power to prevent their entry to our country. We have seen previously convicted murderers, rapists and paedophiles come from Europe to the UK and commit more appalling crimes.
Metropolitan Police Chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe revealed recently that 29% of the Met Police 250,000 arrests in a year were of foreign nationals (not all being EU citizens admittedly), but of these only 13% resulted in a charge or summons [xii]. The excuse for not being able to bring them to justice was because it was not possible to check their DNA, fingerprints or previous convictions, and they were released.
Open borders also aids terrorists. We have seen terrorist attacks in a number of European capitals made by terrorists who can easily cross borders under the EU’s Schengen open borders system. Britain is not in Schengen but any EU citizen has the right to come to Britain if they wish. Europe has plenty of its own home-grown terrorists who have free access to the UK, but we also saw how in the Paris attacks of November 2015 at last one of the terrorists was operating on a forged passport. Whenever these terrorist attacks occur the EU uses it as an excuse to call for more power over police and judicial matters and to create the EU’s own security and intelligence services.
Writing in the magazine Prospect, a former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove (1999-2004),has saidBritain wouldbe safer outside of the EU. He said that leaving the EU would make it easier to deport terrorists and control our borders. He added that Europe would not turn its back on Britain because our intelligence services because, “Britain is Europe’s leader in intelligence and security matters give much more than they get in return”. [xiii]
Outside the EU the organized crime and terrorist threat will not go away but we would be free to control our own borders, and we can continue, as we always have done, to share our intelligence with our allies, but allowing our intelligence services to be merged with an EU intelligence service would be a tremendous mistake.
Has the European Arrest Warrant made us safer from criminals and terrorists?
No! The European Arrest Warrant is just one part of an EU system of criminal justice being created which supersedes the English legal system. Britain was one of the first countries to pass an Extradition Act back in 1870. That Act required prima facie evidence to be presented to the English extradition court for it to satisfy itself that there was sufficient evidence against the accused person to justify their surrender to a foreign judicial system.
The 1870 Act worked well until the then Conservative Government replaced it with the Extradition Act of 1989, the small print of which allowed the European Convention on Extradition to be ratified in 1990. This removed the requirement for primate facie evidence to be presented to the English extradition court.
The Extradition Act 2003 removed any further safeguards for the accused person. Under the Act ‘extradition’ became ‘judicial surrender’. It allows a British citizen to be removed to any other EU member states purely on the strength of a form completed by the relevant foreign authority; this can be purely on ‘suspicion’. No prima facie evidence is presented to the English court, and indeed they have no power to prevent ‘judicial surrender’. This goes entirely against the centuries old English legal protection enshrined in Habeas Corpus which prevented anyone being imprisoned without evidence against them and without a charge being laid for a specific offence in English law.
This is because of the EU doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ which says all EU legal, judicial, and penal systems are of equal standing – which is palpably not so. British citizens can be sent abroad purely at the request of a foreign examining magistrate and locked up for months or years while investigations take place; whereas, the British police cannot request extradition of a suspect unless they have fully investigated and amassed sufficient evidence for a charge to be laid against them.
This highlights the fundamental difference between continental legal systems and the English legal systems: under continental legal systems people may be imprisoned for long periods while accusations are investigated, whereas under the English system people may only be imprisoned (on remand) after a specific criminal offence has been fully investigated and charges laid. The English legal system evolved over 800 years as much to project the innocent as to convict the guilty and those principled are being sacrificed in favour of an EU system of criminal law.