Home What's New Speeches & Articles Newsletter - Jul 2008 Biography Diary Contact Information Photo Album Parliamentary Highlights Publications Links MEPs' Transparency   Conservative Party Latest News from Conservatives.com Conservative Party Website
		Letter to the Editor Leicester Mercury - Tuesday 18th October 2005 Dear Sir, Mr. Pollard (Mailbox, 18th October) says I am totally confused. Not so confused as he is, though! He says that "The European Arrest Warrant has nothing to do with the UK's police reorganisation". Not directly, no. But the proposed regional police forces bear an uncanny resemblance to the "European regions" into which our country is being split, to further the EU's policy of Balkanisation of member-states and its progressive side-lining of national governments (who now make well under half their countries' laws -- most are made in Brussels). So both initiatives are different faces of the EU in general and of the EU's Justice and Home Affairs policies in particular. Of course our government likes to present this as a purely UK policy, but it clearly follows a Brussels pattern. Mr. Pollard praises the EU Arrest Warrant as "a less bureaucratic method of bringing criminals to trial". The USSR had a good, non-bureaucratic way of bringing criminals to trial. They'd knock on the door at four a.m., drag the suspect away and pull his fingernails out. The EU Arrest Warrant may or may not be bureaucratic. But it undermines our historic freedom under the law. For the first time a British citizen can be arrested and shipped abroad on the whim of a foreign magistrate to face trial in a foreign country Yours faithfully Roger Helmer East Midlands Conservative MEP