Britannia Radio

A special day for EU Parliament

Tomorrow will be a special day for the EU Parliament, because the first post-Lisbon EU treaty change will come into force and so it will once again be lawfully constituted.

That's after a period of two years since December 1st 2009 when the Treaty of Lisbon came into force, during which the composition of the Parliament has been in clear breach of the EU treaties as amended.

As explained here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/pressroom/content/20100223BKG69359/html/Ratification-of-Parliament%27s-18-additional-MEPs-completed

The root cause of the unlawfulness being the refusal of the German government to withdraw three surplus German MEPs, the 99 elected in June 2009 exceeding the new maximum of 96 MEPs for any country which was laid down by the Treaty of Lisbon.

I think it's worth mentioning this, because hardly anybody in this country was aware of this legal problem with the EU Parliament, which by rights should have rendered all its acts null and void, or noticed when a treaty protocol to correct the problem was agreed by the EU member states in June 2010, or registered that Parliament was being asked to approve that first post-Lisbon EU treaty change through the unrelated European Union Bill, the "referendum lock" law:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/12/part/2/enacted

"Part 2

Implementation of transitional Protocol on MEPs

15 Protocol on MEPs: approval, and addition to list of treaties

(1) The Protocol amending the Protocol ( No. 36) on transitional provisions annexed to the Treaty on European Union, to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and to the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, signed at Brussels on 23 June 2010, is approved for the purposes of section 5 of the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 (amendment of founding Treaties: approval by Act of Parliament)."

Likewise it seems that hardly anybody in this country has yet noticed that the SECOND post-Lisbon EU treaty change was agreed by EU leaders on March 25th 2011:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:091:0001:0002:EN:PDF　

"EUROPEAN COUNCIL DECISION of 25 March 2011

amending Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union with regard to a stability mechanism for Member States whose currency is the euro "

Or that Cameron asked for and got nothing substantive in return for his agreement to that radical EU treaty change.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that future EU treaty changes will necessarily come along with fanfares - "Behold the Treaty of X", X being some city in the EU - because the eurocrats have learned that it's far better to quietly make piecemeal changes - a protocol here, a European Council Decision there - and provided that the mass media are prepared to co-operate they can be slipped through unnoticed and therefore unchallenged.

And it's not even the case that to get away with this they'll have to use either of the new "simplified revision procedures" provided by the Treaty of Lisbon, because the first EU treaty change was done by the old procedure, but just done very quietly.