A tabloid-friendly guide to the EU and ECHR

While media watching, one thing you notice is a repeated confusion between the European Union (EU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (run by the Council of Europe, CoE).

This may be completely inadvertent, but the Sun, Daily Mail and Express do make this mistake on a regular basis, amongst other "errors".

I thought I would help them out.

Wikipedia has the following diagram showing how the jurisdiction of various European bodies overlaps*, as well as a few extra bits**:

As you can see there is a clear overlap between the EU and CoE/ECtHR - in fact to join the EU you must be a member of the CoE/ECtHR - but it is clear that there is a significant difference between the two, even when simply looking at the members of each.

The main difference is that one is more trade-related; one more co-operation related.

The EU was set up in 1958 by various western European countries, but not the UK (which created the European Free Trade Association in response), to help them trade with each other.  In fact, the basic idea of the EU is to create an economic bloc between various countries via a single internal market.

The CoE was set up in 1949 - by the UK among others - is more of an inter-governmental co-operation organisation, kind of like a Europe-only UN, with a specific focus on civil rights by the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK drafted, and a less obvious focus on pharmacology standards.

So while it can be seen that there are similarities between the two, there are obvious differences.

Hopefully, the tabloids will read this and take note, especially as the EU has already attempted to point this out, albeit without success.

* There are a few bodies which aren't shown on the diagram, including the Central European Free Trade Agreement (which will probably be swallowed up by the EU in the future given the EU's Candidates and Potential Candidates), and the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia which is rarely mentioned in the UK.


** The other items are the European Free Trade Association; the European Economic Area; the EU Customs Zone; and the Schengen Area; as well as showing non-EU countries countries which have agreements to mint €s, but not those which decided to use it, without reaching a formal agreement, due to historic reasons. Tweet

We regret the error...

You may or not know that the Daily Mail has recently started a "Corrections and Clarifications" column.

It appears to be an attempt to defend the current status of media self-regulation, which is currently being investigated by the Leveson inquiry.

By way of keeping track of what is published Dave Cross has started up a site which feeds the Mail's corrections into one place: Corrections and Clarifications.

As Dave points out:

It’s a pretty half-arsed affair for many reasons. The only way to find it is by searching for it by title. There’s no link for it anywhere on the site and it doesn’t seem to have been given its own section. Most bizarrely, the corrections don’t appear in the main web feed for the paper.

None of the corrections link back to the original story and in many cases you only get a vague description to help you work out which story they are talking about. And even if you work out which story they’re talking about, it’s often impossible to find the story on the web site as it has been removed.

Any suggestions can be emailed to corrections@mailonsunday.co.uk or sent via post. Tweet

The real cause of the Eurozone crisis?

I saw this article on Twitter a few days ago.

The article itself is in Spanish, but that's of no real concern; what counts is the graph:

It shows when interest rates on government bonds of various Euro-zone countries changed.

As can be seen, everything was fine until Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, so kicking-off the world's current economic problems.

Is this the actual cause of Greece's current problems? Tweet

Govt to AMCD: STFU

I forgot to mention this when it came out 2 weeks ago...

The government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs - which advises the government how best to enforce the anti-drug laws, and from which David Nutt was sacked almost 2 years ago - said that the government should decriminalise possession of all illegal drugs, like in Portugal.

In a shocking response the government has actually agreed to implement its recommendations forthwith responded with STFU.

I could make a comment about the government being addicted and unable to see the damaging effects of its actions, but its too easy.

I guess all that I can do is go "*sigh*"... Tweet

A potential SNP/UKIP tie-up?

The United Kingdom Independence Party - if you're not aware - want the UK to leave the EU.

I seem to have stumbled upon a way to help them achieve it. Back in May an article was published in a Scottish legal magazine about the legal implications should Scotland declare independence from the rest of the UK.

The article quotes Lorand Bartels (a lecturer of International Economic Law at Edinburgh University, and Senior Lecturer in Law at Cambridge):

“Both as a matter of international law and as a matter of EU law, Scotland would have to negotiate its accession to the EU as a new member state” *

This suggests than upon a declaration of independence, Scotland would no longer be part of the EU, possibly automatically.

Scotland is currently run by the Scottish National Party. One of their plans is to hold a referendum on whether Scotland should remain part of the UK. **

Scottish independence was not mentioned in UKIP's manifesto for this year's Scottish elections (PDF) and it does not appear to be covered on their website. In fact, UKIP have spoken out against the SNP even though their plans would ensure UKIP's policies are implemented.

Therefore, I suggest that UKIP move all their supporters to Scotland and vote en masse for independence should there be a referendum. Basically, UKIP should follow the plan of the "Free State Project" - a US proposal for all libertarians to move to New Hampshire and make it a stronghold for them due to a bloc vote.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, Obiter J has done a post covering this issue too - from a more legal, non-piss-taking point of view.

* He carries on by showing that should Scotland wish to re-join the EU, it would have to go through the qualification criteria, like other prospective members


** They refer to Scotland being a "member of the EU...", but, of course, this would be incorrect should independence be declared. Tweet

UK in the European, what? Union/Economic Area/Free Trade Agreement

You're probably aware that the bill to hold a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU was defeated last night.

If it had passed, I planned to do a post going through the pluses and minuses of the various options: stay in the EU; leave but remain part of the EEA, like Norway or Liechtenstein, and so still have to follow EU law without a say in it; do a "Switzerland"; or choose do summat else entirely.

Of course, my post is now not necessary, but I would like to flag up this post by Jon Worth going into what I would have covered. Tweet

The EUSSR exists!!!!!

When dealing with anti-EU types, one phrase they tend to use is "EUSSR".

As can be seen, it's meant to suggest that the EU is the same as the Soviet Union.

Of course, this is complete bollocks.  After all, the USSR wasn't really up on free movement of goods, capital, services or people, what with it being a communist dictatorship.

Anyway, I was reading a report which the EU published a few days ago concerning its 2010 dealings with other countries over human rights.

It's quite an interesting read, especially the sections covering the Middle East and North Africa given this year's events.

While I was reading it I found discovered something alarming: the EUSSR does exist! Seriously, it does - check pg. 124, para. 5.4.11.

Of course, the EU's use of the term is somewhat different; in the report it is an acronym for "EU mission in support of the Security Sector Reform", which is was created to help stabilise Guinea-Bissau but closed last year due to the on-going situation there. Tweet

Back of the net!

You probably heard that the European Court of Justice has ruled in favour of a pub landlady from Portsmouth who was sued for copyright by the Premier League.

I was going to write summat, but there's three posts by Head of Legal which go into more detail than I possibly could do - or, frankly, would want to - and gives a good overview of its overall impact.

If you wanna go into a lot of detail I'd recommend reading the whole lot (and also the judgement if you want a flavour of how thrilling it is to read EU law).

If not, I'll summarise it: if you have a valid subscription for the Premier League from any EU country, e.g. Greece, and want to use it in any other EU country, e.g. the UK, you can't be stopped. It's based on one of the main features of the EU: the free movement of goods. Tweet

Amanda Knox is guilty!

You may be aware that Amanda Knox has been cleared of murder.

However, if you'd stumbled upon the Daily Mail's website, you would have thought otherwise.

This was published on the Mail's website as soon as the judge said "Guilty".  However, he was referring to her being "guilty" of defamation, not murder.

Nevertheless, it appears that whoever publishes articles on the Mail's website jumped the gun. A piece went up with the URL slug-words: Amanda-Knox-verdict-GUILTY-appeal-murder-conviction-rejected.

The artice has since been removed, but a screenshot was taken by @syn for posterity.

While it has captions including "Media scum", what it interesting is that the Mail's erroneous article has "quotes" from the prosecution.

The killer paragraph is:

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said "Justice has been done" although they said on a "human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail"

Clearly they would only make such comments upon there being a guilty verdict. Even ignoring the fact that she was innocent and so the quotes would never have been made, the timing of the article on its own (8:50 p.m.) would suggest that the "quotes" are fake. Tweet

Nothing but Job-Killing Regulations and Red Tape!

According to the Sun, George Osborne has said that he wants to slash what are technically referred to as "job killing regulations" and summarises views which he received at last year's Tory conference

"What a lot of the businesses in the audience said was, 'You are just making it too difficult to employ people. There is too much red tape, there are too many obstacles, you are asking us to take too many risks'. We have listened to those businesses."

Amongst other things, this will include increasing the qualification time before you can bring a claim for unfair dismissal from 1 year to 2 years. Oddly, reversing his own VAT increase doesn't get a mention...

Coincidentally enough, a few days ago I was involved in a discussion on Twitter over "red tape" in the UK, and thought it would be a good idea to see how the UK ranks overall.

I stumbled upon a Wikipedia article called the "Ease of Doing Business Index". This is an annual survey done by the World Bank that ranks every country in order of how easy it is to, well, do business there. As of 2011, the UK ranks #4.

As PPUKScuzz said "If we're already 4th (abo[ve] the US/Japan/Germany) red tape is obviously not the biggest issue". However, as with many studies, it does have its share of criticisms.

Thankfully, there are alternative rankings.  These includes one made by the Heritage Foundation and Wall St Journal called the "Index of Economic Freedom", in which we rank #16; the Fraser Institute creates one known as the "Economic Freedom of the World" in which we rank #8; while the World Economic Forum publishes two different ones: the "Global Competitiveness Report", in which we rank #10; and "Global Enabling Trade Report", which ranked us as #17 in 2010. *

So we have 5 different studies. Some from right-wing think-tanks, others from international bodies. An average of these puts the UK at #11.

Given that we have such a high ranking, I doubt that anyone can seriously claim that the UK is suffering from "red tape" and "obstacles" like Osborne does...

PS. I also thought that this quote was worth highlighting

"To go on strike because you are being offered a better pension than your next-door neighbour at a time when maybe your next-door neighbour is facing losing their job is something that is very difficult to justify."

In other words, "That's a nice job you have there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it".

* There are almost certainly others, but I just wanted to give an overview. Tweet