JG Hanning states that it is time for the Law Society to make a clear statement of where it stands on the issue of 'ceding' powers in the area of criminal justice to the EU (see [2004] Gazette, 1 July, 14).


The Society's EU committee is working on these and other issues, alongside other domestic committees.


However, in characterising the issue as the Law Society needing to defend the freedoms and rights on which British law has rested for centuries, the correspondent appears to fail to understand what developments are taking place and the reasons for them.


The UK joined a European Community that was expressly part of an 'ever closer union' among the peoples of Europe. That closer union involves the breaking down of national barriers to trade, work and travel, which has benefited UK businesses and individuals for more than 30 years.


The removal of internal barriers allows criminals to carry out their deeds more easily across the whole of the EU, and much of what has been done so far at EU level is aimed at cracking down on the cross-border nature of crime and to make it more difficult for criminals to evade justice; prime examples are the money laundering provisions, the European arrest warrant, and the areas of police and judicial co-operation. Signing up to such measures arguably involves a sharing, rather than loss, of sovereignty - and the UK and the rest of Europe are safer as a result. Those who seek to knock developments to which the UK is an active party within the EU should do so from a platform of knowledge rather than from behind a fog of myth.



Michael Renouf, chairman, Law Society's EU committee, Brussels