The British High Court declared on Thursday that May’s government has not legal authority to start the Brexit process without prior parliamentary approval.
The Parliament is the only body empowered to use royal prérogatives in order to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, i.e. the mechanism for the voluntary and unilateral withdrawal of a country from the European Union.
Yesterday, three senior judges started a hearing process that could legally challenge Brexit outcomes.
David Pannick, a distinguished British barrister, pleaded before the court that “prerogative powers may not be used by the minister to remove rights established by the act of parliament.”
Therefore, only the parliament can change the European Communities Act away through the enactment of a new legislation.
The hearing will continue until next week and any possible High Court’s decision will be appealed and sent to the Supreme Court, which will begin a hearing in December.
In link with the classification of the Russian non-governmental organisation International Historical and Human Rights Society (IHHRS) 'Memorial' as 'a foreign agent', the Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament, Elena Valenciano (S&D, ES) made the following statement:
Speaking on behalf of the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights, I denounce the decision taken by the Russian authorities which is another attempt to silence an independent organisation that promotes and protects human rights through peaceful advocacy work.
On Wednesday the 12th of October the Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner, D. Avramopoulos, and the Security Union Commissioner, Sir J. King, reviewed and made public the monthly report on EU action in the security arena.
The reinforcement of concrete actions to fight terrorist groups and criminal actions is high on the Commissioners’ priority list. The priority will notably be on actions related to deradicalisation.
Another measure proposed was to help Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland and Slovakia to implement the transposition of the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR).
The PNR is an EU directive aiming to oblige airlines to hand to EU member states their passengers’ data in order to help authorities to fight terrorism. This system needs systematic collection of passengers data which will impacts their rights to privacy and data protection.
To this end, a plan will be launched in November to release €70 million in 2017-2020 and €3.8 million will be reserved to the exchanges of information between Member States and Europol.
Finally, the Commission will take actions to guarantee the European Centre for the fight against Terrorism’s support to Europol in order to provide a more extensive interoperability of information systems.
The next meeting of the Subcommittee on Human Rights will take place on Wednesday 9 November 2016 from 9.00 - 12.30 and from 15.00 - 18.30 in room ASP 3G3.