One Euro law back on the EU agenda

Monday, 21st February 2011

The EU project to build a "single country called Europe" includes the establishment of a single criminal law for all. A blueprint for a pan-European criminal code, called "Corpus Juris", was unveiled at a seminar hosted by the EU Commission in Spain in 1997.

It is based on the Napoleonic-inquisitorial system of law used on the continent, and will explicitly do away with our British safeguards of Habeas Corpus, Trial by Independent Jury, protection against double jeopardy, etc.

This video shows a debate held in Cambridge University in February 1999, between Torquil Dick-Erikson – a British legal researcher who was amongst those present at the seminar in Spain – speaking for the motion that "Corpus Juris is a threat to our civil liberties", and Professor John Spencer, who helped write Corpus Juris, against.

Although this debate took place in 1999, twelve years ago, Corpus Juris is set to become highly topical now.

At that time, the project for a unified EU criminal law was put on a back burner by the EU Commission, doubtless also because the House of Lords, in a Report mentioned here by Professor Spencer, came out and rejected it, politely but firmly (he expressed the hope the Report would be favourable).

But now in the second decade of the 21st century, with the EU's new powers obtained through the Treaty of Lisbon, we can see a road-map of the way ahead emerging: the EU Commission has already officially announced they will be establishing the European Public Prosecutor, which is the centre-piece of the Corpus Juris project.

Once that happens, the EPP will naturally need a rule-book, and that is when Corpus Juris will surely be wheeled out again, for the inquisitorial judicial authorities of the EU will want to extend their sway over Britain, Ireland and Malta too.

Already we have a foretaste of the bitter medicine that lies in store for us with the European Arrest Warrant. And another step forward, the European Investigation Order, has already been accepted - quite unnecessarily - by the ConLibDem coalition too.

Once this is up and running, we can surely expect the EPP to be placed officially on the table, and his fearsome powers - quite unprecedented for the people of Britain - will have to be regulated, by the Corpus Juris code or by something very much like it.