Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-17-Speech-5-029"
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"en.20001117.3.5-029"2
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"Mr President, according to the Council decision on the establishment of the European police college, the aim of the EPC is to help train senior law enforcement officers of the Member States. I note that the rapporteur wants to change "law enforcement officers" to "police", which is probably a good idea. But what also caught my eye is that this training is aimed at supporting and developing a European approach in the field of crime-fighting and protecting internal security. The rapporteur wishes to see added crime prevention, provision of services, innovation and border surveillance and also wants internal security modified to include maintaining law and order.
The problem I have with these statements is that I am not quite sure what the European approach to maintaining law and order, etc, actually involves. It is not specified in either the Council decision or the rapporteur's report. All I can say, from a strictly British perspective, is that if this means that continental practices are to become
throughout Europe, our own police force will be taking an unhealthy interest in armoured cars, water cannon, tear-gas launchers and dinky little pistols which they can swing from their already over-laden belts.
This apart, it is something of a surprise to find that there is even such a thing as a European approach to crime fighting. I am absolutely certain that it will come as a rude shock to most of the British population that internal security is an area where there is any room for involvement of the European Union.
It will probably come as an even greater shock for them to learn that the European Parliament wants the European police college to be responsible for training police forces and border control forces – that is to say customs and excise – in order to prepare them for the use of Community law and the implementation of common and Community measures.
There it is: Community law and common and Community measures. The cat is out of the bag. Clear as day we can see the ambition of the EU naked in tooth and claw; a common approach – the European approach – to fighting crime and internal security; one people, one law and one police force. I am sure that the European Union will be far more subtle than this. Our police force will retain their uniforms, right down to the comforting woolly pullies that they have taken to wearing. The ranks will be the same and the local badges will be untouched. From all the outward signs the facade will be unchanged but, under the expert tutelage of the European college, they will be working to a different agenda: a European agenda, applying Community law and Community measures.
That is such a far cry from the Common Market which the United Kingdom joined in 1973. No-one in the UK would ever have believed a soothsayer from that period who warned that it would all end up in Dixon of Dock Green whistling "Ode to Joy" and working out how to apply the European approach to policing down at the nick.
But here we are in Strasbourg in a near-deserted Chamber hearing that which is almost unbelievable. Our own Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, his Foreign Secretary, Mr Cook and other British ministers may deny that a superstate is on its way, but when I hear proposals for our own police forces to be trained in a European approach to crime fighting and internal security, it is obvious that the writing is on the wall. As you can probably gather, I will not be supporting this report."@en1
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"de rigeur"1
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