Daniel Hannan: Common Law, Not EU Law

Daniel Hannan, citing example of lack of rule of law as one of the reasons why the United Kingdom is planning to opt out from following and implementing some of the EU policies. November 20^th, EU Parliament, Strasbourg.

video source from DanHannanMEP YouTube channel

(see video at the bottom of transcript)

transcript:

Daniel Hannan:

...Deputy Speaker,

As you all know the United Kingdom has given notice that it intends to opt out of most of the justice and home affairs issues controlled currently by the European Union. And if anyone doesn't understand why, let me introduce to a young man that I visited in Athens a couple of years ago, when he was detained under house arrest called Andrew Symeou, who was a victim of very obviously a case of mistaken identity, as was established when the case finally came to court, and it was thrown out almost immediately.

But in the mean time, this young man who had gone to Greece celebrating his A levels had lost three years of his life. Eleven months of them spent in one of the most unpleasant prisons in Europe. How do you give that back to a boy of that age?

We complain about the length of detention, there was a great rough in Britain about 42 days being too-long, here was three years without a case, so much as coming to trial.

My country's greatest gift to the human race, our supreme export was the concept of the rule of law and Habeas Corpus, and the freedom of the individual, and all of the things that could go with the conception of the law being above the government rather than a projection of the wishes of the state. This is not some abstract issue of sovereignty, this is about the law being a protector of the individual and not an instrument of the government.