Monday, 6 September 2010
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The project, at a total cost of €14,863,988, is two-thirds funded by EU ... secrecysurrounding the decision has been subject to widespread criticism. ...
www.openeurope.org.uk/How the EU is watching you: the rise of Europe’s surveillance state
As ratification of the EU Lisbon Treaty draws closer, new research from Open Europe warns that the Treaty will help accelerate moves towards an EU surveillance state.
The Lisbon Treaty marks a significant shift of power from national governments to the EU in the field of justice and home affairs.
It will lead to an increase in the volume and scope of EU legislation, which is already having a profound impact on EU citizens’ civil liberties and privacy.
As well as measures on asylum and immigration policy, EU ministers and the European Commission are currently negotiating a raft of controversial new proposals, which are set to radically increase the EU’s role in policing, criminal, and security matters.
EU leaders hope to reach formal agreement on many controversial new initiatives by the end of the year.
They include:
a target to train a third of all police officers across the EU in a “common culture” of policing;
the mass collection and sharing of personal data including DNA records into an EU-wide database;
controversial surveillance techniques including ‘cyber patrols’;
the creation of a fledgling ‘EU Home Office’ with powers to decide on cooperation on police, border, immigration and criminal justice issues;
an EU “master plan” on information exchange;
the transfer of criminal proceedings among EU member states; a three-fold increase in the number of controversial EU arrest warrants;
access to other member states’ national tax databases;
and EU laws on citizens’ right to internet access, among many other things.
However, despite these significant plans, the current Swedish EU Presidency has said that, with the Lisbon Treaty nearly in place, the current proposals are too “modest” and that the EU should increase its “level of ambition” in the field of justice and home affairs policy.
Under Lisbon, national governments will lose their veto power to block legislation in the field of justice and home affairs, while the European Commission will be given greater power to draw up new laws, and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will be responsible for enforcing them.
The UK Government’s claim that under Lisbon the UK will maintain independence and can ‘pick and choose’ which justice and home affairs policies it opts into is a smokescreen.
In practice, the UK has often been a key driver of policy, and has in some instances even exported domestic initiatives to the rest of the EU, particularly those that increase the power of the state over the individual.
The most prominent examples of where the UK has pushed the agenda include the Data Retention Directive, the use of Passenger Name Records collected by travel companies and the European Arrest Warrant.
This method of ‘exporting’ UK initiatives to the EU is akin to policy making via the back door, circumventing adequate democratic controls.
Open Europe Analyst Stephen Booth said:
“Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty will see powers over justice and home affairs policy almost completely shifted to the EU level.
How can citizens expect their fundamental rights to liberty and independence from the state to be protected by unaccountable institutions which have a vested interest in creating more laws?”
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