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Letter to the Editor

Daily Telegraph - Monday, 7 January 2005

Dear Sir,

The "benefits of EU membership" claimed by Roger Liddle (article, March 5th), of freedom, security and economic strength, cannot sustain a moment's critical analysis.

Under the EU Arrest Warrant, British citizens can now be arrested on the whim of a foreign magistrate in Greece or Slovenia. The government's draconian and illiberal house-arrest proposals are a direct consequence of the European Convention on Human Rights. That's freedom?

Security? Brussels' proposals for independent defence structures outside NATO, its adversarial approach to our vital ally the USA, its "Galileo" global positioning system (with China as a partner), are undermining the transatlantic relationship on which our security has depended for decades, and continues to depend.

But Liddle's most preposterous claim is "economic strength". The Bundesbank has said "it can find no benefit for German industry" in the Single Market. Commentators from Peter Mandelson to the European Commission itself have highlighted the vast costs of EU regulation. The hubristic "Lisbon process", promising "the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world" by 2010, lies in ruins. The French and German economies are edging from failure to disaster, with the euro currency a key contributory factor. German unemployment is at levels not seen since the Weimar Republic. That's economic strength?

Yours faithfully,

Roger Helmer MEP