Liz suggests

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Wrong but right

Thursday, 2nd August 2007

The Economist makes a fair point in dismissing my piece on the religious divide within the EU:

Um, how to break this to Mr Pollard...? His entire thesis is based on a misunderstanding. Few people have realised the profound importance of footnote 18, because it is without importance.
...Having failed to win an opt-out, the Poles were allowed to salve their pride by inserting a unilateral declaration into the text, with no legal force to exempt them from one syllable of the Charter. It is the EU diplomatic equivalent of being convicted and sentenced on some charge, and being allowed to make a statement to the court before you are led away in handcuffs. It may help you feel a little bit better, but it changes nothing.

I could perhaps have phrased it better when I described the footnote as "one of the most important elements of the treaty". I realise, of course, that unilateral declarations have no legal force as such. But my point is not that the footnote is important because of its legal force in this particular treaty, but because the Polish declaration arose because of a huge issue - that there are some countries which will indeed ban such research and treatment. And the consequences of that will be profound.