European Union (Amendment) Bill

In an earlier debate, I read out 11 areas where CFSP is affected by veto changes. I will supply those to the noble Lord, but I will not go through them again now, as I know that there is tremendous pressure on time. Perhaps not all these areas will be directly affected, but the influence will certainly be there. The question also arises whether an individual case brought to the European Court of Justice arising from CFSP provisions is justiciable. The Government tried under the convention to have that clarified, but failed to do so. We have discussed that in great detail. I greatly respect the noble Lord, but we have a time constraint and I must push on. The point of all this is that, if the ECJ is the supreme court—and, indeed, the supreme constitutional court—that knocks a hole into all the arguments about the charter and the red lines. None of those things is invulnerable to the supremacy of the European Court of Justice, as been made so beautifully clear by the distinguished legal luminaries in the Committee tonight. The noble Baroness said that the member states make laws. It is the Council that makes the laws—sometimes unanimously, sometimes without the veto. We are left with the fact that the principle of ECJ supremacy is there; the principle of non-supremacy of the Parliament of this nation is there, but the question is, how far does the ECJ’s writ extend? How far does the principle extend and how far do we want it to extend? Now that the proposition of the Bill is that Pillar 3 be collapsed into the Union, the extension—the purview—of the ECJ would be extended further and the scope would be extended further. Is that what we want? I think not. When we look into the future people will say that we need to think very hard indeed—I cannot go all the way with my noble friend. Constitutional safeguards similar to those in other countries are needed to ensure that in the future we do not find ourselves dragged further and further into a pattern of law and supremacy for which nobody in this country voted; many people do not want it and it is not healthy for the future of this nation or for Europe.