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		Letter to the Editor Nottingham Evening Post - Tuesday 26th October 2004 Dear Sir, John Gretton has really tied himself in knots (letters, 25/10). He argues that the Conservative Party will be unable to deliver on its commitments to repatriate powers from Brussels, including fisheries policy, and to support his point he reminds us of the French ban on British beef, maintained for years in defiance of EU law. But that experience proves exactly the opposite of Mr. Gretton's point. It shows that member states can ignore the rules when it suits them. Many of my constituents ask me why France gets away with breaking EU law while we slavishly follow it. Gretton then refers to "the EU exit door marked isolation for the UK". It is not Conservative policy to leave the EU, but it is ridiculous to suggest we might be "isolated" if we did. We should remain the world's fourth largest economy and second largest global investor. We should remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and a key member of NATO, the WTO, the G7, OECD, the World Bank and the Commonwealth. A funny kind of isolation. It is the EU itself, with its sliding economies, its failing euro, its gross, stifling, intrusive anti-competitive legislation, its self-referential, inward-looking protectionist instincts, that is becoming isolated in the global economy. Yours faithfully, Roger Helmer MEP