There is nothing like a real-life, real-time tragedy such as the discovery of those 39 victims of people trafficking in a container lorry in Purfleet to shine a harsh and unforgiving light on the potential implications of leaving the EU.
Here was an example of a burgeoning branch of international criminal activity which can only be successfully combatted by the sort of law enforcement machinery which the EU has laboriously put together over the last twenty years.
The government announced today the setting up of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) drawn from the member states touched by this crime – that is an essential piece of EU law enforcement machinery, along with others such as Europol and Eurojust which are already involved in dealing with cases of human trafficking. We may well need to use European Arrest Warrants (EAW) if all those involved in this appalling incident are to be brought to justice and if others involved in trafficking are to be deterred.
And yet, if the government’s relaxed attitude to the U.K. leaving the EU without a deal this Thursday had actually come to pass, all this machinery would have become non-operative that same day. A narrow escape, indeed, you might think. As long as the risk of our leaving without a deal exists – on 31 January or at some later date – then that kind of damage to our internal security will continue to be a real one.
Nor does Boris Johnson’s deal avoid plenty of collateral damage of this nature. The truncated transitional period up to the end of 2020 will not leave the U.K. in the same position as if we were still a member state. We will be out of Europol and Eurojust, unable to rely on the European Arrest Warrant, deprived of access to all of the EU’s criminal data exchange systems.
And beyond the transitional period? The non-binding Political Declaration is full of the sort of good intentions which often pave the way to hell. Much about
“considering “ this and “ examining “that, but no certainty that it will prove possible to construct the sort of load-bearing cooperative systems without which effective action against international crime will not be possible. Do not forget that the EU has never done this sort of thing before with a third country. It has taken almost a decade to get Norway close to being able to benefit from the EAW system.
In a way, Purfleet is a wake-up call to remind us of how much of our security has come to depend on our EU membership. What we are talking about here is not the exchange of sensitive intelligence, which will no doubt continue since it does not depend on EU channels, but working, effective law enforcement systems to deal with the scourge of international crime.