Skip to content

Europe cut off by Brexit

France is blocking Britain’s attempt to remain part of a European Union security system that helps to identify foreign criminals and is designed to keep the public safe.

The government wants a guarantee that it can continue to access and share vital DNA, fingerprint and vehicle information with other European countries after Brexit.

Ministers have said that Britain’s participation in the so-called Prüm Convention is “clearly in the national interest”. The system allowed French and Belgian authorities to identify the terrorists responsible for the Paris attacks in November 2015.

Britain has been rebuffed, however, with France leading the resistance at a recent meeting to its efforts to join a “Prüm 2”. A senior government figure said: “Normally France is quite helpful when it comes to security co-operation but on this they are being awkward.”

Trust the Frogs not to grok cooperation. Sure, we get access to their information – but they also get access to our.

Sigh.

22 thoughts on “Europe cut off by Brexit”

  1. So Much For Subtlety

    Britain cannot deport Islamists to France or Italy. Because of the Courts’ insane interpretation of European Human Rights. But France can deport them to Algeria.

    I am not sure that France has more to gain than Britain. After all, who has the most Islamist nutters? Even if France asked for one, we would not give him to them.

    All this looks like is make-work to keep some high ranking police officers in comfy offices far away from the cold, wet, dangerous streets. Although it is, I am sure, nice to know who the corpse of your nearest suicide bombers is

  2. So Much For Subtlety

    Remember – the European governments do not have a clue how to deal with Islamic terror. They have no plan. They only want to keep the populace tranquil. The policy is to wait it out – let the Islamists kill as many of us as they want until they get bored.

    Which is why every terrorist attack produces nothing but threats to the likes of Tommy Robinson.

    Sharing information is a waste of time when there is no intent even to punish.

  3. This is mighty white of the French. Not since the demise of the much-missed De Gaulle have they shown us such kindness.

    Well done chaps!!!

    Excluded from their crappy club we have a chance to build a system of our own that might actually work. Esp if we purge all the necrotic timber on our own side.

  4. In other news:
    – the UK government bans tieing of products (can’t force you to buy the insurance if you want to buy the product)
    – bans companies from agreeing not to compete

    vs
    – apparently the EU comes as a package
    – the EU can’t sign a simple equivalence regime for financial services as that would lead to competition in regulatory standards (competition being presumed to head down, rather than towards sensible)

    Still one rule for us one for them (EU response to not abiding by GDPR is that they exempted themselves from it).

    DC
    I think TW groks negotiation but is able to tell when your interlocutor is interested in a mutually beneficial deal and when they are just posturing

  5. 1 Dumb looks at the 20th century and sees the victory of the planned economy
    2 Dumber looks at the 20th century and concludes the default setting for Europe is happy cooperation

  6. So Facepainter you don’t even like or trust your own scummy EU allies. But you still want to kiss their arse. And dare to talk about other folk as dumb and dumber.

  7. The Meissen Bison

    Surely for Brexit to mean Brexit the UK needs to separate itself from any organisation with an umlaut.

    In all seriousness, and in preparation for a no-deal Brexit, the UK needs to start walking away from all contentious points where the EU is intransigent – Galileo, Prüm and so forth.

    It won’t take that long for the throwing up of obstacles and the polite acceptance by the UK of its wilful exclusion to make clear to Michel Barnier and the Commission the direction of travel and the ultimate destination.

    From another perspective, if the train is ultimately destined to hit the buffers, we might at least salvage a little dignity from the process.

  8. It’s a non-story. Yet another part of Project Fear (stage 2) to justify a Brexit deal that amounts to Remain.
    Ignore. Neither side will be wanting to relinquish the control the information sharing enables. Or the layer of bureaucracy involved.

  9. Erm, don’t we have this thing called the English Channel? And once we have ‘our’ borders back…

  10. Love how when it comes to budgets we are on the hook to pay for all this stuff we previously agreed to, when it comes to the assets or outputs of what those budgets are funding we have no rights to any of it, Galileo being another example

  11. @The Meissen Bison, May 31, 2018 at 1:13 pm

    In all seriousness, and in preparation for a no-deal Brexit, the UK needs to start walking away from all contentious points where the EU is intransigent – Galileo, Prüm and so forth.

    + 2

    On security & intelligence, EU needs us much more than we need them. UK is second part of Five-Eyes

    After Paris attack co-operation was sorely lacking. In France, their many diff police didn’t help each other. France, Belgium & Germany didn’t share info or hold suspects.

    In Brussels, “not our problem”:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyC8KQf7gdI
    http://hopkinsworld.com/a-belgian-mayor-is-suing-me-for-exposing-that-she-knew-an-isis-terrorist-was-hiding-in-her-city/

    .
    Gallieo – we hold they keys & the bases. May should tell EU to do one as we don’t care.

  12. WikiP:

    The United Kingdom subsequently exercised their right to opt-out from them effective 1 December 2014. However, the UK committed to assess their future participation and make a decision by 31 December 2015 on whether to rejoin the Decisions. On 22 January 2016 the UK notified the EU of its desire to resume participating in the Prum Decisions, which was approved by the Commission on 20 May 2016
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%BCm_Convention#Parties_to_the_convention

    Obviously not important to UK – Cameron: in, out, [Referendum negotiations] jump back in

  13. So Much For Subtlety

    The Meissen Bison – “Surely for Brexit to mean Brexit the UK needs to separate itself from any organisation with an umlaut.”

    No more Hüsker Dü? Or Häagen-Dazs?

    And it is a good thing Lemmy is dead or British policy on Motörhead might be very confused.

    I think the British approach to Europe has been wrong since 1914 at least. We have aligned ourselves with anyone who uses olive oil. Whereas we should have remained aligned with anyone who used an umlaut. That might have avoided the 1932-1945 unpleasantness.

  14. @SMFS

    Letters with “things” over/under them in words. We ignore the
    “things”, much to annoyance of foreigners.

    Did anyone pronounce Motörhead as the “things” demand?

  15. @ SMFS
    Germany invaded Belgium. What else could we do?
    IMHO, the basic fault lay with Serbia who should have immediately handed over the culprits (“suspects” until the end of the trial) to Austria-Hungary but since we had a treaty commitment to defend Belgium the “Old Contemptibles” HAD to fight.

  16. So Much For Subtlety

    Pcar – “Letters with “things” over/under them in words. We ignore the “things”, much to annoyance of foreigners.”

    Well that is one of the problems with English – we have a lot more vowel sounds than most languages but all we do is make a half-hearted attempt at a diphthong and that is it. At least German is consistent.

    “Did anyone pronounce Motörhead as the “things” demand?”

    I wonder how the Queen would pronounce Motörhead? I bet she would.

    john 77 – “Germany invaded Belgium. What else could we do? IMHO, the basic fault lay with Serbia who should have immediately handed over the culprits (“suspects” until the end of the trial) to Austria-Hungary but since we had a treaty commitment to defend Belgium the “Old Contemptibles” HAD to fight.”

    We have ignored treaties before. But the solution was to do something before the invasion of Belgium. And Serbia was to blame. They murdered the poor Arch-Duke. For that they should have paid and we should not have tried to protect them. Well, protect France which was protecting them.

    The problem is that German unification produced a hugely successful, productive, large country in the heart of Europe. Its numbers, success and basic competence meant that Germany was intended to play a much bigger role in European life. We could have done something in the 1870s to stop that unification but we didn’t. So the only real solution is to live with a powerful Germany playing a role in line with its wealth and power. Instead we tried to work with the French to keep Germany down. That did not work. That will not work. Germany will dominate Europe. Merkel pretends otherwise, but she does.

    Our mistake was siding with France. All of Britain’s successes come when we fight France with the help of the Germans. The other way around has been a disaster.

  17. @So Much For Subtlety, June 2, 2018 at 2:45 am

    Well that is one of the problems with English – we have a lot more vowel sounds than most languages but all we do is make a half-hearted attempt at a diphthong and that is it. At least German is consistent.

    Consistent – yep. Efficient – no. We learn how to pronounce “word” quickly, job done. They need to learn more, special keyboards, extra keystrokes, more ink…

    No “things”, sometime in 90s Braun gave up on UK/USA pronunciation wrong and accepted we say Brawn not Broon. Prior to that their TV adverts showed “BRAUN”, but didn’t say the word.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *