Stuart Agnew MEP – East of England UK Independence Party 25 Regent Street Great Yarmouth Norfolk NR30 1RL Tel: 01493-856744 e-mail: ukipeast@intamail.com www.stuartagnewmep.co.uk

  

Dear Mr Agnew

Thank you for taking the trouble of getting back to me. You are the only MEP who to-date has replied to me and you deserve some respect for that, I am extremely grateful.

However, there are some points you raise in your letter that I would like to address.

Firstly, there is the issue of citizenship, or rather citizenship rights. You describe this as being ‘imposed’, surely this is an incorrect interpretation and citizenship cannot be imposed…

The 'citizenship of the EU' was not imposed upon the citizens of the UK, nor the collective citizens of the EU, it was an international treaty agreement entered into by the membership on a multilateral basis. 'EU citizenship' does not confer any rights in its own right, they are reciprocally applied rights by all 28 member states. The EU is not a sovereign state and is therefore unable to confer citizenship upon any persons, regardless of who they are.

It is an offer, you either take it up or you don’t, you exercise it or you don’t but it is not imposed, in the strict English meaning of that word.

The EU has never demanded that I be loyal, or obey its treaties. I have never had to swear allegiance to the EU, its institutions or show my loyalty to it in any other way. Whether I chose to exercise my rights as an EU citizen, by living in another country, voting in European Parliament elections, or writing to my MEPs is entirely up to me.

Something similar happens with EU law, EU law does not take precedence over domestic law, it is given precedence by virtue of international treaty agreement, in the same way that the UK has around 13,000 other treaty agreements with sovereign states. EU law only has competence over community law, that is to say, it can only rule in areas in which the UK has entered into a multilateral treaty with the other 27 member states of the EU; it might be noted that this is exactly the same competence which the ICJ would have were it not for the existence of the ECJ. The ECJ cannot, and does not rule on issues that only effect a single state, it would not have jurisdiction to do so.

As a former lawyer, I would be extremely grateful if you could aside provide me with detailed citations of the unconstitutionality you allege regarding EU law because I would be very interested to review them.

Then there is a matter of the European arrest warrant you state “The EAW was supposed to be used to tackle terrorism and organised crime but has ended up being used for such things as trivial motoring offenses…”

However, a little research tells me, EAWs can only be issued for offences carrying a maximum penalty of at least a year in prison, or when the individual has already been sentenced to at least four months in prison. 

I would be very interested if you could provide me the specific details of a case in which an EAW has been issued involving a traffic offence, a case name and date would be very welcome.

I am sure you are also aware that there are specific cases in which a country can refuse to honour an EAW. This include the double jeopardy principle - a suspect will not be returned to the country that issued the EAW if he or she has already been tried for the same offence abroad. A refusal can be justified if an EU state's amnesty covers the offence in question. A refusal can also be justified under a statute of limitations - that is, if a time limit has passed for prosecution. And a state can reject an EAW if under its laws the suspect is a minor and below the age of criminal responsibility.

It is also clear that the UK has used the EAW for its own benefit many times. One instance in particular sticks in my mind, Hussain Osman, who in 2005 was charged over the failed 21 July London bomb attacks after being extradited from Italy. Mr Osman was accused of attempting to place a bomb in Shepherds Bush underground station. At the time, I was working in Shepherds Bush and using that station every day. Mr Osman was arrested in Rome a week after the attempted bombings, and flown back to the UK on Thursday 22 September.

Ironically, Mr Osman’s Italian lawyer attempted to block the extradition on the grounds that he would not receive a fair trial in the UK.

I think therefore that the EAW far from being a you say “unsubstantiated accusations on a piece of paper” is an extremely good example of the give and take that must exist between independent nation states. This is especially so in these times when terrorism is rampant and international and I am sorry that you feel obliged to disparage and misrepresent it simply because it was conceived by the EU. I also do not think it requires ‘rectification’.

You then go on to address our desire for ‘Associate citizenship’ saying this will place us in an untenable situation because we “would live in Britain while subjecting themselves to a foreign state”. Obviously, you have an issue with ‘subjection’ but setting that to one side, I have to ask, why? Doesn’t the UK, for example, accept dual nationality?

If people are defined and marked by their culture as right-wing parties such as yours seem to postulate, what about people like me, the child of an English mother and a Spanish father, who grew up in England and in Spain, belongs to both cultures and speaks both languages, am I ‘untenable’?

What about the citizens of Northern Ireland? It was agreed as part of the peace process that they would be able to take up Irish citizenship in addition to British and many of them are doing so, right now.

Are the British/German daughters of your former party leader, Mr Farage, ‘untenable’, is their nationality position ‘nonsense’?

Are you yourself ‘untenable’? Your party despises the EU and yet you stood for its Parliament, you were elected, you represent people from the UK there…. You are paid remuneration from the EU, aren’t you? You claim expenses? You will receive a very generous pension as a result of your tenure in the EU parliament? Are you ‘untenable’ Mr Agnew, or simply a good old garden grown hypocrite?

So, in order to be consistent, if you are going to argue that having dual British/EU citizenship rights in untenable nonsense, wouldn’t you have to strip dual nationality from all British citizens, including the wife and daughters of your former leader Mr. Nigel Farage, Mr Boris Johnson and the entire population of Northern Ireland?

Sorry, EU citizenship rights to me are something real and enforceable and I and many others are not prepared to be forcibly stripped of them by ideologues such as yourself without a bloody good fight. I am sure you can understand that. Paltry offers of possible ‘visa free travel’ are a very poor second best.

Let’s also disagree on ‘uncontrolled mass immigration’ shall we, your little bogeyman, blaming years of UK government underinvestment in infrastructure and services on immigrants is one of the oldest tricks in the demagogue’s copybook.

I was admitted to hospital in Watford on Boxing day and was kept in for a few days, while I was there I indeed saw and spoke to many foreigners, Spaniards, Romanians, Fillipinos, Africans as well as British nationals... But most of them were highly-qualified medical personnel actually looking after me, helping me get back on my feet. Even my female consultant was Polish.

So I thank you for your letter, which was indeed, as you say, ‘honest’ from a certain point of view.

Pity it was so full of the usual untruths used to justify brexit.

Kind regards

Clariana