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The EU's ability to intervene into local politics is not as direct as you think. Every EU law needs to be signed by individual countries before it's valid in th
by andr 16y ago
The EU's ability to intervene into local politics is not as direct as you think. Every EU law needs to be signed by individual countries before it's valid in there. Only after the law is signed and the countries break it, can they be held accountable by the EU. So if the EU was to act, it would have to pass a law (which will go in effect in a few years), then get France to sign it, and later sue them.
- estel 16y agoPresumably you're excluding higher courts such as the ECHR? Not that I think the vastly expanded role the ECHR currently fulfils is a good thing (it handles orders of magnitude more cases than it ought).
- fmw 16y agoThis isn't entirely correct. The basic idea that countries are only bound by treaties they agreed to (or laws that flow from those treaties, e.g. if they give the EU parliament legislative power in some areas) is right. However, some laws might be in breach of existing treaties (like the ECHR) that the countries previously signed. That might very well be the case i.c. If so, the (part of the) law that is in breach is void until the treaty is changed (which is unlikely in most cases).