UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Amendment) Bill

Amendment No. 55 seeks to delete subsection (6) from clause 3. As we have seen from our discussion of amendment No. 39, clause 3 gives legal force in domestic United Kingdom law to the Lisbon treaty’s collapse of the separate European Community pillars, which include among other things the single market and the common agricultural policy, into the European Union’s new unitary legal identity, which will also incorporate the currently legally distinct common foreign and security policy and co-operation in police and criminal justice matters. On the international level, terminological changes flowing from and supporting that fundamental change are made to existing European Community CFSP and police and criminal justice Acts brought in under the current treaties by article 5(3) of the Lisbon treaty. The laws will continue to have force until they are amended or repealed under the new treaty provisions. Article 5(3) of the Lisbon treaty provides that all existing references in those laws to the titles, sections and numbering of the treaties will be automatically understood to refer to the titles, sections and numbering of the treaties as amended by the Lisbon treaty. Clause 3 seeks to amend UK legislation to keep it in line with those changes at EU level. To that end, subsection (6) seeks to provide for a blanket change in how terminology in existing UK law will thereafter be understood. Specifically, it says that any instance of ““European Communities”” shall be treated as a reference to the ““European Union””. As we have seen, those changes can have wide-ranging importance due to the fact that the new EU will be far wider than the existing European Community. In particular, the change in the meaning of all UK law currently referring to the European Communities could, depending on the UK laws in question, give domestic legal effect to common foreign and security policy provisions, despite the fact that the Bill excludes the CFSP from the definition given to the EU treaties in the 1972 Act. That is because the term ““EU”” alone is not restricted to the 1972 Act’s definition of the EU treaties—as provided in clause 3(1) of the Bill, it includes everything under the EU exactly as it is provided for in the treaty on European Union at international level. That means the common foreign and security policy as well. Our key objection to subsection (6) is that it is such a blanket provision, the true consequences of which we cannot know without examining every individual change that it would make to each of the affected EU laws. For that reason, the subsection is not only potentially somewhat dangerous, but unnecessary because, as we saw during our debate on the previous group of amendments, clause 3(4) and (5) already give the Government the power to make orders to vary the terminology of any references in UK law that have not already been provided in the schedule to the Bill. We have already stated that we believe that orders made under subsections (4) and (5) should be made only by the affirmative procedure so that we can better scrutinise the effect that each would have. I am disappointed that the House did not see fit to agree to that amendment, but the argument was nevertheless put and debated. Clause 3(6) is also a potential problem, as changes made under that provision are not even subject to the negative procedure. Under clause 3, the changes in each instance are automatic and outside the scope of parliamentary scrutiny and are therefore unwelcome. Amendment No. 55 will improve the Bill without wrecking it, by allowing for all terminological changes in UK legislation following the Lisbon treaty, were it to be ratified, to be brought before Parliament for scrutiny, to ensure that the changes were really only terminological and were otherwise acceptable to the legislature.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
472 c1510-1 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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