Wednesday, 3rd September 2008

UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP has angrily attacked a government statement welcoming EU plans to allow British citizens to be tried in their absence or automatically extradited to other member states.

Mr Farage said the plan – approved by the European Parliament and now going to the Commission for approval – undermined one of the basic principles of British justice:

"If we're accused we must be able to know who accused us. If we are to be tried for a crime we must be able to mount a defence.

"Yet now we can be dragged away to another country to rot in jail without there even being a pretence of a fair trial."

The EU wants courts would to have the ability to pass judgement in criminal cases and when issuing fines or European Arrest Warrants without the defendants being present.

Mr Farage said: "If other European nations want to adopt our own higher protections, our greater civil liberties, then they are of course quite free to, without EU compulsion.

"But why should we destroy our own freedoms just to fit in with them?"

The Ministry of Justice had said the plan would "increase legal certainty and improve mutual trust"  and would "help ensure that a person cannot escape justice by fleeing to another member state."

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