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EU court plan 'infringes UK legal rights'
Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor03.09.08
British subjects could be convicted in their absence in foreign courts under EU plans, it emerged today.
The proposals, which were slammed by the Tories, would also allow Britons to be extradited automatically under fast-track procedures at the request of another country. The plan has been approved by the European Parliament and will be considered by the Council of Ministers in the next three months.
It would allow courts to make judgments without defendants being present where they were imposing fines, when dealing with criminal offences carrying a custodial sentence and when issuing the European arrest warrant.
It could cover offences such as traffic transgressions, theft, shoplifting or fraud, up to assault or murder. People who had been accused in their absence would have the right to a retrial or the right of appeal when extradited.
Philip Bradbourn, the Tory justice and home affairs spokesman in the European Parliament, said: "It goes against one of the most fundamental corner-stones of British justice."
Reader views (4)
Don't forget we're not a federal state as others have suggested. The EU does not have a single, EU wide, legal system. Laws and process vary significantly (don't forget plane spotters in Greece). Add in any cost/inconvenience of returning to another country to defend yourself against an event that may not even exist in the UK and it becomes patently obvious that this is another step too far (remember America's attempts to enforce its laws on the rest of the world).
- Colin H, Tadley, Hants
How crazy is this? We have Natural Frontiers that have been defended by our forefathers. Forget it, successive governments have destroyed these in their blind entrenchments into the EU. Result! We have turned into the EU Doormat! Now this? Sorry, it's too much. It's too crazy! Get us out of Europe!
- Maria, London
You still have the right to appeal and a retrial.
Don't commit a crime. Be a good model European citizen
- Winsley, London England
All this is in keeping with the criminal proceedings in any federal state, for instance, the United States. Why the uproar? When will people in the U.K. finally come to realize that the U.K. is no longer a country, but rather a province of a new larger country?! Forty years of successive British governments, both Conservative and Labour, have turned this once proud country into a province. We must accept that we now have European nationality.
- Phil Jones, London UK
