Irish Times wrong about 30% EU laws claim

[Almanac]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]With permission from Anthony Coughlan:[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Open Letter to Mark Hennessy, Political correspondent Irish Times, re inaccurate Fine Gael claim on EU laws[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Monday 25 May 2009[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Dear Mark,[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]I write re your report on page 7 of today's Irish Times referring to Fine Gael's claim that the EU was the "source of less than 30% of Irish laws."[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Fine Gael's figure is vitiated completely by the fact that they do not count EU regulations, which are EU legal acts that are directly applicable and binding in EU Member States without the intervention of national legislatures (see Note below). Many of these regulations relate to agricultural and fisheries for instance, where they are very numerous. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]In contrast to EU regulations, EU directives are translated into national laws by means of acts of the Oireachtas. A directive, as you know, is a general injunction from the EU to do such-and-such, but how it is done is left to national Governments and legislatures to decide.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Another point undermining Fine Gael's figure is that all Acts of the Oireachtas implementing EU directives do not mention the EU or refer to the relevant EU directive as their source, although certainly some do. So the Fine Gael statement that only one-fifth of Acts of the Oireachtas make reference to EU legislation does not cover all EU-derived Acts. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]To get a true picture one needs to count all legislative acts that the Irish State and Irish citizens must obey - primary national legislation, statutory instruments, directly applicable EU regulations and the special category of EU legislation known as EU "decisions", which are binding on the Member States they are directed to.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Moreover, all EU-derived Acts of the Oireachtas and statutory instruments should be counted, not just those that explicitly mention the EU. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]It is hard to get accurate figures for the relative proportion of legal acts originating in Brussels and those originating in the national parliaments of the different EU States. Attempts to get these figures from Government sources are usually fobbed off by the national authorities as too difficult to work out. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]I read recently of a question in the British House of Commons re the relative proportion of legal acts originating in the UK and the EU, which elicited a ministerial response that it would be an excesssive administrative burden to obtain the figures. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]The reluctance by national governments to provide this information is surely itself significant.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]The only exact figures that I have come across are those produced in Germany by the German Ministry of Justice. With Teutonic thoroughness these stated in answer to a parliamentary question in the Bundestag in 2005 that between 1998 and 2004, 23,167 legal acts were adopted in Germany, of which 18,917, some 84% of the total, were of EU origin; so that less than one-fifth originated domestically.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]These figures were cited by former German President Dr Roman Herzog, who is also a past president of the German Constitutional Court, in a well-known artice in Welt am Sonntag which he co-authored in 2007. This article and the figures it gives have been widely quoted, for their source seems unimpeachable, and they are the basis of the 80% figure which Fine Gael dismisses.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Berlow are relevant excerpts from Herzog's article.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]EU legislation will apply in general across the board for all EU countries , so the absolute number of legal acts for different countries coming from the EU should be broadly similar, although not exactly so. For example land-locked EU countries like Slovakia and Hungary will not be affected by EU fisheries regulations as island countries like Ireland and Britain will be. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Also the tempo of domestic and EU legislation will vary from country to country and from year to year. The years following the introduction of some major piece of EU law is likely to have more implementing regulations than other years.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]It seems fair to say, therefore, in the light of the authoritative German figures and taking account of directly applicable EU regulations, that a good majority - probably around two-thirds or more - of legal acts each year in the EU Member States now emanate from Brussels.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]This proportion would increase further if the EU Constitution, now embodied in the Lisbon Treaty, were to be come into force. Under Lisbon the EU would obtain powers to adopt legislative acts in relation to some 40 new areas or matters. These relate mainly to crime, justice and policing, public services, immigration, energy, transport, tourism, sport, culture, public health and the EU budget. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Yours sincerely[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Anthony Coughlan[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]_______[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]EU REGULATIONS ARE DIRECTLY APPLICABLE IN MEM ER STATES[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]________[/COLOR][/SIZE]


[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]"A regulation has general application, is binding in its entirety and is directly applicable in all member states ... Thus regulations are the most powerful lawmaking tools available to the Community institutions. Without any intervention by national governments or legislatures, regulations become part of the national legal systems of each member state"[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]S.Weatherill and P. Beaumont, EU Law, page 150, 1999 edition [/COLOR][/SIZE]


[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]_______[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Former German President Dr Roman Herzog, also former president of the German Constitutional Court, excerpts from article in Welt Am Sonntag, 14 January 2007, co-authored with Lüder Gerkin:[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]_______[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]" It is true that we are experiencing an ever greater, inappropriate centralisation of powers away from the Member States and towards the EU. The German Ministry of Justice has compared the legal acts adopted by the Federal Republic of Germany between 1998 and 2004 with those adopted by the European Union in the same period. Results: 84 percent come from Brussels, with only 16 percent coming originally from Berlin ...[/COLOR][/SIZE]


[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Against the fundamental principle of the separation of powers, the essential European legislative functions lie with the members of the executive ...[/COLOR][/SIZE]


[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]The figures stated by the German Ministry of Justice make it quite clear. By far the large majority of legislation valid in Germany is adopted by the German Government in the Council of Ministers, and not by the German Parliament ...[/COLOR][/SIZE]


[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]And so the question arises whether Germany can still be referred to unconditionally as a parliamentary democracy at all, because the separation of powers as a fundamental constituting principle of the constitutional order in Germany has been cancelled out for large sections of the legislation applying to this country ...[/COLOR][/SIZE]


[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]The proposed draft Constitution does not contain the possibility of restoring individual competencies to the national level as a centralisation brake. Instead, it counts on the same one-way street as before, heading towards ever greater centralisation ...[/COLOR][/SIZE]


[SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]Most people have a fundamentally positive attitude to European integration. But at the same time, they have an ever increasing feeling that something is going wrong, that an untransparent, complex, intricate, mammoth institution has evolved, divorced from the factual problems and national traditions, grabbing ever greater competencies and areas of power; that the democratic control mechanisms are failing: in brief, that it cannot go on like this ..."[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[seabhcan]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=+1][COLOR=#000000]To get a true picture one needs to count all legislative acts that the Irish State and Irish citizens must obey

Most EU regulations don't apply to Irish citizens. They regulate business, and apply to businesses, not citizens.

If you only count regulations applying to citizens, as you claim, they are very few.

[eurosceptic]

Hear Hear Tony Couglan. Any chance generation yes will respond with howls of "lies, lies and more lies"?

[hiding behind a poster]

Anthony Coughlan has been wrong about every EU treaty so far, so its safe to assume he's wrong about this, too. Probably the most discredited anti-European in Ireland.

[Horses]

FG caught red handed now, making up lies for its real boss the EU not the Irish people and the Irish Times didn't bother to get a Libertas response.

[mccafferty cat]

Anthony Coughlan has been wrong about every EU treaty, ever. He has told bare-faced lies for over 30 years, and none of his apocalyptic predictions have come to pass.

Before the last referendum, I read back on some of the stuff he said during the Amsterdam Treaty debate. Hilarious stuff!

A liar and a loon. I'll take the Irish Times over him any day, thanks very much

[corelli]

Hear Hear Tony Couglan. Any chance generation yes will respond with howls of "lies, lies and more lies"?

If we are so inundated with EU generated law Euro, would you care to enlighten us as to how many times the plaintiff or defendant in any action in an Irish superior court has requested a reference to the ECJ for clarification on a point of EU law, as transposed, since we joined the EU originally? It's a good indication as to how much influence EU law actually has.

[TimBuckII]

Anthony Coughlan has been wrong about every EU treaty so far, so its safe to assume he's wrong about this, too. Probably the most discredited anti-European in Ireland.

Are there any credited anti-europeans? Attacking peoples credit is common amoung the pro-euorpeans.

[CookieMonster]

Are there any credited anti-europeans? Attacking peoples credit is common amoung the pro-euorpeans.

Making huge sweeping statements attacking people's credibility with scant, if any, back up is common practice among the so called "pro-europeans".

[eurosceptic]

mccaff what did he say during the amsterdam debate? I am interested to hear.
Correlli you miss my point. I have consistently asserted that i dont care what the exact percentage is, its the amount of pain that counts, thus i consider this a storm in a teacup. I have also consistently asserted that you can spin doctor the exact percentage any way you want. What annoys me is when organisations like generation yes accuse others of lies (which sets the bar very high) and then there is no sight nor sound of them when a professor of law comes up with a substantially higher figure than they come up with and says the libertas figure is credible.