Brussels set to decide EU criminal policy?

EUobserver reports that Viviane Reding has, through the EU Commission, issued a paper on ensuring the effective implementation of EU policies through criminal law, initially aimed at areas of environmental protection, financial services regulation, data protection, fish conservation, road safety and protection of EU money. A press release on the matter can be viewed here and Reding's website here.

For British Conservative MEP Sajjad Karim to maintain that defining what constitutes a crime and what penalties should apply is a fundamental issue of statehood; and that there exists a process of implementing and enforcing EU policy through national governments, beggars belief. If the EU now has the authority to vet our country's budgets, why is Karim getting in a lather about this latest idea when setting a country's budget is just as fundamental an issue of statehood? As for his assertion that a process exists to implement and enforce EU policy, we all know that when this latest idea is formally decided by the Commission that same process of implementation and enforcement rubber-stamping will apply - so Karim's point is? Reding joins the class of idiots too, with her statement that decisions need to be made about what is a crime and how it is to be punished, continuing that such decisions go to the heart of national sovereignty. The contradiction in her statement seems to have passed her by - if such decisions go to the heart of national sovereignty, just what the hell is she, an unelected person of any national government, doing sticking her nose in?

The Lisbon Treaty has changed the legal framework for EU criminal law measures: no criminal law measure can be decided without the agreement of the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the European Union now has full judicial control. EU criminal law measures can define which violations of the rules are to be considered as criminal offences in national laws throughout the Union. They can also provide for effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal sanctions, such as requiring the imposition of certain levels of monetary fines or imprisonment for an offence.

If the EU can decide what constitutes a crime in respect of road safety and set a punishment for each and every type of offence in that area, how long before they also decide to intercede in other areas? How long before the laws by which society in our country lives are totally written by the EU? The EU elite, when considering the subject of democracy, obviously adhere to the dictum of  H.L. Mencken who believed that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.