Why I am Going to the European Court
by Daniel Hannan MEP

Let me choose my words with care. Whenever I raise this subject, I get deluged with angry letters saying that I am comparing the EU to a Stalinist autocracy, and thereby insulting the millions who died in the gulags.

So I want to be clear. Whatever grievances we have against Brussels, it is plainly not a tyranny. It does not refuse to let us travel abroad, or throw us into prison camps without trial. Its constituent member states are all liberal democracies.

None the less, something is happening in the European Parliament which can only be called dictatorial. Some months ago, the EU decided that, in order to bolster our sense of European identity, we needed trans-national political parties. These parties would be funded by the taxpayer, and would have to meet various criteria in order to qualify. They would need, for example, to win a minimum level of support in at least seven countries. They would need to contest elections across Europe as a whole, on a common and binding manifesto. And, critically, they would have to sign up to European values as set out in the EU treaties.

This may sound innocuous enough, but I believe it is one of the most sinister proposals to have crossed my desk since I was elected five years ago. In fact, I am going to court to try to block it. I and 25 other MEPs are funding our own legal action against the proposal, arguing that it is incompatible with the EU's stated commitment to democracy and pluralism. For the effect of this law would be to bar Euro-sceptic political parties.

It would do so in two ways. First, non-federalist parties are more likely to see themselves in national terms. They are therefore unlikely to want to merge themselves into pan-European movements. More immediately, though, they would be debarred by the requirement that they accept the values of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms - not because they object to human rights, but because they believe that delicate questions of this kind should be settled by elected national parliamentarians rather than unelected European judges.

Supporters of the legislation rush to reassure me that mainstream Euro-sceptics, such as the British Tories, have nothing to fear. It is aimed only at far-Right groups, they say, such as Le Pen's National Front. But once we decide that some views may be placed off limits, where do we draw the line?

The idea that some parties are more equal than others is at odds with the principle of democracy. A free electoral system implies that people should be allowed to vote for anyone they like; and that their representatives, once elected, should be able to come together in any combinations they please. How they behave ought to be between them and their voters. If an MP expresses noxious views, it should be for his constituents to pass judgment on him. Taking this duty from them does not only traduce the democratic principle; it also infantilises the electorate.

One of my friends in the European parliament is a Polish MP. He has been here for the better part of a year, as one of the observers from the accession countries who are allowed to participate, but not vote, in the run-up to their countries' formal admission. When he saw the proposed statute on European political parties, he went white with anger.

"This is exactly what the Communists did in Poland," he told me. "They didn't ban elections: we had elections all the time. They didn't even ban opposition parties, at least not by the 1970s. All they did was to ban the opposition parties from contesting the elections. And do you know what their official excuse was? Exactly the same as this. They said it was to stop fascist parties. Only pretty soon that came to apply to everyone except the Communists and their Agrarian allies".

Unsurprisingly, several Poles are among those who are supporting the legal action against the proposal. They know exactly where you can end up once you start banning certain points of view. Consider my friend's experience. He is my age, having entered politics, like me, in his late twenties. He has a baby daughter, the same age as mine. He is a conservative and a free-marketeer. But he might have grown up in a different world.

His father had defected to Canada when he was a young boy. They contrived to meet once, in the 1980s in Cuba, the only country to which they were both able to travel. My friend's father tried to persuade his son to come and live in the West. My friend replied that he wanted to serve Poland: he thought that change was in the air, and he dreamed of sitting as a conservative and a patriot in a free Sejm. A few years later, he fulfilled his dream, but his father never got to see it. The old man had died shortly before travel restrictions were lifted, and the two had never had the chance to meet again.

Mercifully, Prodi's EU is not Jaruszelski's Poland. But it is saddens me that so few people seem perturbed by the principle of what is being proposed. Too many MEPs and Commissioners are gripped by a "Europe right or wrong" attitude which leads them to see freedom, democracy and the rule of law itself as subservient to the greater goal of European integration. That we are discarding the concept of political pluralism is seen as a small price to pay for dishing the sceptics.

Five years in politics is enough to have taught me that court cases are expensive and uncertain. I am not embarking on this one lightly. But, on certain issues, we simply have to make a stand, whatever the cost. If not, what are we doing here?

Further Resources:
The Real Face of the European Union by Phillip Day, video documentary (PAL format only)
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day
Vigilance by Ashley Mote
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