The UK is in danger of compromising its ability to police international crimes like terrorism and drug trafficking by exercising its right to opt out of EU criminal law, a report has warned.
The 79-page study, by researchers working at the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS), at the University of Cambridge examines the likely consequences of the UK choosing to withdraw from a swathe of EU criminal legislation under terms agreed at the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007.
Protocol 36 of the Treaty entitles the UK to opt out of a range of European measures concerning police and criminal justice before June 2014. The Government is under increasing pressure to do so, particularly from those who believe that exercising this right would “repatriate” criminal justice to the UK.
But the new report argues that the escalating opt-out debate is proceeding on the basis of a misunderstanding both about what exercising the Protocol 36 opt-out would achieve, and the difficulties that would result from it. It stresses that key measures which allow the UK to police international crimes, for example, by enabling the swift extradition of terrorists or other wanted criminals who have fled to Europe, would be lost.
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Image: European Parliament.
Credit: Alina Zienowicz.
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Opt out and suffer the consequences, EU criminal law report warns
17 September 2012
Amid an escalating debate on whether the Government should use Protocol 36 of the Lisbon Treaty to opt out of EU criminal law, a study reveals how doing so would limit the UK’s ability to police international crime.