When Both Sides of the EU Deal Debate Are Correct

By Ed Emerson

MP Michael Gove is playing cat amongst the EU pigeons.

Following PM David Cameron’s announcement of the negotiated deal he brought back from Brussels, which is headed for an EU referendum, some legal experts have sided with Mr Gove in his claim that elements of the deal could be overturned by the European Court of Justice.

And they’re right.  

The sticky wicket in all this is a minority part of the actual agreement itself, like the brake on benefits or free movement, which involved new law that has yet to be approved by the European parliament.

And even if those laws do get passed, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, which stands above every nation state, can challenge.

That’s the legal perspective.

And yet despite the fact that this deal is not yet in the treaties, and will be decided on the basis of the treaties, reality suggests this is far more about politicising than any expectation of the UK’s ‘special status’ within the EU coming to harm.  

Mr Gove sees Mr Cameron’s position as politically precarious on the basis that months of painstaking negotiations with 27 European countries “could” be toileted and thus make the EU referendum a false promise based on a deal that fell apart.

Of course, Mr Cameron’s side has rolled out the experts to say the deal is legally binding, sits as an irreversible international law decision and that Michael Gove is completely doolally.

And they are also right.

Thus the problem. Both sides are right, to a degree, and this is all much legal ado about mostly nothing.

And on this point alone, as the deal agreed in Brussels last week is complicated to the point that it defies any truly simple answers, it might just justify some Magic Circle solicitor to charge out at ￡1,000 per hour to clarify; if for no other reason than to avoid an EU referendum vote that might, in the most bizarre of circumstances, need to be taken twice.

And neither side, nor the bewildered voting electorate, want anything to do with that.

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