Wednesday, 6th January 2010

A leading British QC has confirmed the UK has surrendered its sovereignty to the EU and needs should act now to regain its law-making powers.

Writing in Wall Street Journal, Martin Howe QC argues that with the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty "the UK now needs a bill which will write formally into law the rule that Parliament is sovereign and that it can, if it so chooses, over-ride any laws of external origin including those originating from the EU." 

Howe argues that "The Lisbon Treaty expands the EU's law-making powers and correspondingly restricts the power of the UK Parliament to make law. So the UK Parliament, while under the transient majority control of one party, has apparently permanently restricted the law-making power of future Parliaments, by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty. This restriction on the future law-making power of Parliament has no political legitimacy because it was never put to the British people for their approval."

He concludes: "The [sovereignty] bill would put the UK in a similar position to other countries which already have written constitutions defining the powers of the state. Most notably, the German Federal Constitutional Court has twice emphatically ruled that the powers of the EU within Germany are ultimately limited by the terms of the German constitution (basic law) as interpreted by Germany's own constitutional court."

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