Free Republic

With the British government still trying to define its Brexit strategy, the Maltese EU presidency has warned that the UK will remain under EU law even after a deal is reached. Speaking to journalists in Valletta on Thursday (12 January), Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat said that during the transition period between a Brexit deal and a another agreement to establish new relations, “the governing institutions should be the European institutions”. He said that, for instance, Britain would still be under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) even after it had left the EU. Leaving ECJ jurisdiction...

The new European Commission has rejected the UK Government’s call to set up an independent body to scrutinize EU regulation and impact assessments before and after legislative proposals are adopted by the executive. Jean-Claude Juncker’s spokeswoman, Natasha Bertaud, told EurActiv that impact assessments would remain an internal matter before proposals were adopted. Frans Timmermans, Juncker’s choice for the new post of vice president in charge of better regulation, would ensure their quality, she said, after pointing to EU treaties governing Commission procedures. Currently, research on the impact of regulation is looked over by an internal Commission department. It is then...

National parliaments should be able to initiate reviews of existing EU law, according to a report by the UK parliament. The paper, published on Monday (24 March), by the House of Lords’ EU committee, says domestic lawmakers should have more power in the EU legislative process. “There should be a way for a group of like-minded national parliaments to make constructive suggestions for EU policy initiatives,” it notes. “We would envisage a ‘Green Card’ as recognizing a right for a number of national parliaments working together to make constructive policy or legislative suggestions, including for the review or repeal of...

The UK parliament should have the right to throw out EU laws, according to a letter from Conservative MPs to Prime Minister David Cameron. In the letter, made public on Sunday (12 January), 95 Conservatives (out of a total of 225) stated that the House of Commons should be able to block new EU legislation and repeal existing measures that threaten Britain’s “national interests”. A national parliament veto power would allow the UK to “recover control over our borders, to lift EU burdens on business, to regain control over energy policy and to disapply the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights”....

The UK wants to repatriate 35 EU-wide police and justice laws out of some 130 in its wider efforts to claw back power from the EU. “We believe the UK should opt out of the measures in question for reasons of principle, policy, and pragmatism,” UK home secretary Theresa May told ministers in London on Tuesday (9 July). Tory right-wingers want to repatriate all 133 laws, but May said the UK should retain its cooperation with the EU police agency Europol and the EU’s joint judicial authority Eurojust. … The European Arrest Warrant will also figure into UK’s provisional opt-in...

UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to get other member states to participate in a general review of EU laws has suffered an embarrassing rebuff from Paris and Berlin. France and Germany have refused to take part in Cameron’s much-publicized examination of whether some EU powers should be returned to member states, reports the Financial Times. The paper notes that Paris and Berlin consulted with one another on the issue before concluding that the exercise—known as the “balance of competences”—was more to serve Britain’s domestic political interests. … The review is the cornerstone of London’s EU policy, as Cameron attempts...