10th February 2011

In his Municipal Journal article, Ai Director Jeremy Smith highlights the legal flaws in Part 2 of the current Localism Bill, in which the government seeks to give itself a new power to claw back from local authorities certain fines imposed on Britain by the European Court of Justice. He points out that the government would be acting as prosecutor, judge while also being ‘co-defendant’ in such cases – so the issue should go to an independent court or arbitrator:

“Fog over Channel – continent cut off”, as the old newspaper heading went. But the Localism Bill could give us a new one “Fog over Parliament – EU fine”… well, ‘EU fines’ actually, as Part 2 of the Bill is headed. And a fog of confusion certainly exists over parts of Westminster.

The aim of Clauses 30 to 34 of the Bill is to give Ministers, for the first time, a power to claw back from a local authority (and there may be several involved) all or part of fines imposed on the UK by the European Court of Justice under Article 260 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, where the Minister is satisfied that acts or omissions of the authority have “caused or contributed to the infraction of EU law for which the EU financial sanction was imposed”.

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