Paddy Ashdown has made his voice heard in the row over whether being in the EU helps or hinders national security. It will come as no surprise to anyone that he thinks it helps.
First the broad principle:
My answer is clear. This, more than ever, is the time to stand with our friends in Belgium and across Europe. We must not allow the butchers of ISIS to divide us, and we must give short shrift, too, to those who want to use these attacks to divide our societies. This is no time for division. It is a time to understand why as Europeans we should stand together with our friends in Belgium in their suffering and resist both the racists and extremists of jihad, and the racists and extremists in our midst in their attempts to divide us. Our unity in Europe makes us safer, not weaker. Our solidarity is our best defense. Our pan-European institutions provide us with the means to diminish these threats; they do not, as some foolishly claim, make them worse.
And then the specifies:
Being part of Europe, as I have seen myself, gives Britain a greater voice at the international table. With the greatest foreign policy reach in Europe, backed by expert intelligence services, we enjoy huge clout in the making of European foreign and security policy. When the world’s leaders come together to decide how to tackle these threats, our position in the EU gives the U.K. a seat at the top table.
Brussels is not so far away that terror attacks there will not unnerve ordinary citizens on the streets of London and our other great cities. While there is no such thing as absolute security, they should be heartened by two things. Firstly, the immense effectiveness in counter-terrorism of our police and security services, honed over decades of bomb attacks by the IRA. And secondly, by the immensely beneficial anti-terrorist cooperation that takes place under the auspices of the EU.
Europol coordinates and encourages joint operations by European police forces, with Eurojust performing the same function for prosecutors. EU systems like PNR and the Prüm Convention, to which Britain recently opted in, allow our security services to access data quickly and simply on airline passengers, vehicle registration, DNA and fingerprints. And the European Arrest Warrant provides the means for terrorist suspects to be brought to Britain from other EU countries to face trial for crimes committed here, and vice versa.
You can read his whole article here.
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5 Comments
The European arrest warrant is an abomination – to remove a British citizen from their country and take them to a foreign land where they might not face any cahrges for years runs counter to all notions of criminal justice with which I am familiar.
Not really Paddy according to quite a few including former CIA directors – ‘Former CIA director says UK national security would not be damaged by leaving EU’ – http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/brexit-former-cia-director-says-uk-national-security-would-not-be-damaged-by-leaving-eu-1551574
But There are as many unknown threats on both sides of the Brexit equation. Indeed, people consider the threat of the unknown from Brexit, but there is no-one shouting out that staying in the EU creates massive possible threats also and where the EU has presently all the hallmarks of disintegrating over the next two decades. If this happens the real disaster will happen and Brexit will look like a storm in a teacup. Therefore people had better get their head around the fact that even by staying in, there are definite unknown major threats and possibly ten-times the threat of Brexit.
Just one example. Germany Is Crashing The Euro As Europe’s Economy Goes Into Meltdown – http://yournewswire.com/germany-is-crashing-the-euro-as-europes-economy-goes-into-meltdown/
But now as we stand today, the UK has a chance to pre-empt this possible major socio-economic future threat by going it alone and forging new trade treaties with the world. If that were the case and the EU was in total meltdown, the UK in 20-years time could weather the storm far better, but not if we were a part of the meltdown.
THEREFORE THIS VOTE HAS A LOT TO DO WITH THE WORLD THAT OUR NEXT GENERATION WILL INHERIT FROM US AND WHERE THE VOTE WILL DECIDE THEIR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FATE.
http://worldinnovationfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/brexit-three-of-great-myths-of-staying.html
The European arrest warrant is an abomination
But then so is the US-UK extradition treaty – note it is US-UK not US-EU…
Just another example of how poorly we’ve been served by a sovereign Westminster…
And if one is in an Council of Europe country, which includes all EU countries, there is always the European Convention on human rights with the Human Rights Court to protect one.
Paddy Ashdown has an article inn the Sunday Times of 17/4/2016, page 16, about EU, NATO and Obama.