Anthony Browne

Brussels bites back

Anthony Browne reports on the EU’s unabated lust for control of national policies, from law and order to universities, from biotechnology to tax

Anthony Browne reports on the EU’s unabated lust for control of national policies, from law and order to universities, from biotechnology to tax

Brussels

It was perhaps inevitable that the crash in central London of Banana Republic Airlines Flight 101, which killed 453 people and created a swath of destruction across Islington, provoked Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Few could understand how the judges in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg had the power to overturn the secretary of state’s ban on the airline for its poor safety record, giving it the right to enter UK airspace. As the body-count mounted, not even the most ardent Europhiles wanted to justify the fact that a panel of unelected and unaccountable judges with no known expertise in aviation safety had the power to overrule the British government on banning airlines from flying into Britain. Public blame of the EU was sealed when it emerged that the reason no one could remember the British government handing over this power to the EU’s supreme court in Luxembourg was that ministers had never publicly announced it — no statement in Parliament, not even a press release. They had gone along with the usual EU method, agreeing things behind closed doors.

You may think I am making this up, but the only bit that’s not true — yet — is the accident. You won’t have read about it in the papers or heard it in Parliament, but the government has indeed agreed in principle to give up its final say on which airlines fly into Britain as part of a harmonised EU aviation-safety regime. The main part of the regime — which, an official admitted to me, involves a wholesale transfer of powers from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority to the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne — was announced last week by the European Commission.

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Written by
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne MP is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Environment. He is a former Europe correspondent at the Times and environment editor at the Observer. He is now MP for South Cambridgeshire and a member of the Treasury Select Committee.

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