Stand firm against bully-boy tactics

Date: 14/11/1996

ONCE again, the gloves are off in the long-running battle between the UK government and the rest of Europe.

The war of words sparked by the European Court of Justice's ruling rejecting the British challenge to the EU's maximum 48-hour working week legislation has an all too familiar ring about it.

UK Prime Minister John Major immediately hit back by demanding changes to the treaty to nullify the ruling and prevent the UK from being outvoted again on social issues by making all proposals in this area subject to unanimous voting. If he did not get his way, he warned, the UK would block agreement at the end of the Intergovernmental Conference.

This prompted an angry response from Commission President Jacques Santer, who effectively told Major to stop complaining and start complying, and Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn, who warned that attempting to change an existing law by amending the treaty would be “potentially very damaging to the legal order of the European Union”.

That, in a nutshell, is what this is all about.

It is surely self-evident that the EU can only survive if it is based on the rule of law - and that means abiding by judgements delivered by its courts, in whose hands the authority to interpret the treaty has been placed.

Without a referee respected and obeyed by all the Union's players, the EU would be plunged into chaos and the achievements of the past 40 years rendered null and void.

The British government has long complained vociferously about other member states which fail to comply with EU laws and, ironically, it was the UK which led the campaign for the power to fine recalcitrant governments for ignoring ECJ rulings to be enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty.

Until now, when faced with rulings it does not like, London has called for reforms of the Court to limit its powers. This time, however, it has gone much further, demanding that the treaty be rewritten to reverse the ECJ's verdict in a specific case.

It is one thing to demand reforms of the Court itself, or a change in the voting rules, but quite another to demand treaty changes to overturn individual decisions of the Court. The UK would surely be the first to complain if other member states started doing the same.

That is why it is vital that the rest of the EU stands firm in opposing Major's latest attempt to hold a gun to the head of his European counterparts. It did not work over mad cow disease and it must not be allowed to work this time.