Saturday, 16th August 2008

UKIP's Torquil Dick-Erikson raises the curtain on a secretive EU armed police force that could be deployed in Britain.

The existence of the armed European Gendarmerie force has been pooh-poohed by Europhile commentators in Britain, dismissed as a "Europhobe's scaremongering nightmare".

Well, it may be a nightmare, but we didn't dream it up, they did. Its existence is a fact, documented from EU sources. But in Britain there has been a news black-out about it.

So far, to my knowledge the only mention of it in the UK mass media was a full-page article by Jason Groves in the Sunday Express on September 2007 and a passing mention in the Telegraph by Philip Johnston on February 2008, followed by a letter from me giving a little more information. It was the subject of several columns during the Lisbon debate in the Lords (Hansard, col.s 1103-1110, 14/5/8).

The Eurogendarmes are training, for the moment only in barracks in Vicenza, Italy. But since it is called "European", and since there is now the Treaty of Velsen giving it a legal basis under clear EU auspices, it is most unlikely to remain forever in North-East Italy.

We in Britain must realise that the countries of continental Europe not only have a tradition of criminal justice that it is completely different to ours (no habeas corpus, no trial by independent jury, etc., already discussed at length elsewhere). They also have a totally different tradition of policing.

They say quite openly that their police forces draw on a common "military root", and the EU gendarmerie displays this proudly in its emblem, with a flaming grenade.

To us British, this is a bizarre concept. These officers look like soldiers to us, with their steel helmets and their heavy automatic rifles. The police in continental Europe are militarised and carry lethal weapons at all times. Our police are a civilian force and regularly unarmed.

The continental police forces are organised like an army in each country with officers called "colonel" and "general", and commanded centrally by the national government. Individual policemen are shifted around the country, so each city will be patrolled by strangers. Our police in contrast are by tradition locally recruited, and locally accountable.

Our police are a body of self-propelling law-enforcers, whose job is to prevent crime and investigate crime and collect evidence so as to be able to prosecute criminals. If they had a symbol it would be a magnifying glass and a Sherlock Holmes hat, not a flaming grenade!

The Eurogendarmerie practise street-fighting tactics in battle formation. They can fire tear-gas grenades over the heads of, or straight into, a crowd to disperse , or indeed rubber, or more usually lead bullets, with lethal effect. Random deaths from police gunfire have occurred over recent years in Italy and even in Sweden during G8 and other protests. And when ordered the men will charge forward swinging their batons and anybody who is in their path is likely to get pretty seriously injured. Continental police forces are not so familiar with our concept of "policing by consent".

The fact of having different nationalities drilling side by side is clearly part of a plan to harmonise the different national forces, so as to create a unified European police force. I suspect the ultimate model for this "harmonised" and amalgamated multinational force could be the French Foreign Legion, already a long-standing model of a military force of this sort.

Continental police are under military command and their primary task is to uphold the authority of the state. When they are used to investigate crimes they are often under the direct command of a member of the career judiciary, who has the responsibility but no training in detective work. We can see from the conduct of the Portuguese police in the McCann case, that their methods are very, very different from ours.

Upholding the authority of the State means primarily putting down manifestations of civil unrest. Dealing with crowds of protesters. The Gendarmerie is that section of each continental police force specialised precisely in this activity of crowd control or crowd dispersal.

Of course the big question is "will they ever be able to deploy these fellows in Britain?" And this is where all British Europhiles and even many Eusceptics go straight into denial.

Well so far the EU could not deploy them here, because Justice and Home Affairs is still a member state's prerogative - what is called a "third pillar competence". If the EU tries to legislate on the matter, each member state can wield a veto. But this will change if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.

In fact with the Lisbon Treaty, justice and home affairs will become an EU competence, like practically everything else. The "pillar" structure will go.

And let us not forget that justice and home affairs are the heart of state power, for it includes the power to use physical force on the citizens, to put people in prison. When the EU takes this power, it ceases to be an association of sovereign states, it becomes at last a state in its own right, with powers to repress directly behaviours it deems undesirable by citizens of any member state.

We know that the government says it has obtained "red lines" to safeguard our national autonomy in criminal justice. But several of our EU partners, and our own parliamentary committees, have said they will not be worth much. They will in any case be subject to the interpretation of the European Court of Justice. And even in the best of circumstances, an opt-out can be turned into an opt-in very easily by a government decision, with no need to go through a parliamentary debate and vote. Parliament hands its power to the government, which will hand it over to Brussels. Once that has happened there can be no going back under EU legal doctrine.

Article 6.3 of the Treaty of Velsen allows the EU gendarmerie to be deployed in another State with the simple "consent" of that state. Bob Spink, now UKIP's MP , and Lord Pearson, one of UKIP's two Peers, asked ministers for an assurance that this consent will never be given. No such assurance was forthcoming.

The presence of the Eurogendarmerie on our shores will be what makes the whole EU process physically irreversible. It will not be enough for our Parliament, at that point, to pass an Act repealing the ECA72 and then to simply "tell" them to go. They will not be subject to our Parliament nor to our Queen. They will be subject only to Brussels, and will obey only decisions taken there, decisions taken by majority voting, where we will have only 8% of the vote. It may require physical force to eject them.

The country must be warned.

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