The Court stresses its independence from politics, though EU officials say a number of recent decisions on benefits for migrants show a sensitivity to concerns in Britain and other EU states that have sapped popular support for the European Union.
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October 6 A senior adviser to the European Union’s top court recommended on Tuesday that it dismiss a case against Britain brought by the EU executive, which had complained that restrictions on welfare payments discriminated against non-British EU citizens. This now establishes precedent behind the idea that national parliaments do not get to say who votes in elections.
Mr Cameron wanted to embark on a tour across Europe early next year, to set out his stall for renegotiation: and he planned a “no, no, no” moment over the prisoner votes issue – a decade after the European Court of Human Rights described Britain’s ban on prisoner voting as “unlawful”.
However, eurosceptics suggested today’s ECJ ruling leaves “wriggle room” for a decision against Britain’s blanket ban on prisoners’ votes.
Prisoners can be barred from voting, Europe’s top court has ruled, in a case it is claimed could help Britain preserve its blanket ban.
But when the government proposed legislation in 2010 to restrict the voting ban to those serving sentences of more than four years, a Commons vote by 234 to 22 made clear that MPs were not prepared to comply with the European human rights ruling.
He said the court’s emphasis on bans being “proportionate” in the case of a serious crime made it inevitable that Britons convicted of lesser crimes would win the vote in European elections.
Former prisoner John Hirst from Hull started a UK-wide campaign for prisoners to be given the right to vote.
Mr Cameron has said the issue of prisoner voting makes him “physically sick” and has threatened to quit the European Court of Human Rights – a body entirely separate to the EU – over the issue.
“The lack of coherence and blanket ban will open up the British legal system to challenges from lawyers and prisoners”.
The court said this morning: “it is justified by the necessity of protecting the host member state’s public finances”.
The Prime Minister and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith want to make it harder for migrants to claim welfare, but faced a legal challenge from the European Commission over existing rules which apply to foreigners but not Britons.
“However, this is just the advocate general’s opinion, and we look forward to the ECJ’s judgment in due course”.
However, UKIP’s employment spokeswoman Jane Collins MEP said that while the ruling was “useful in the short term, nothing has changed when it comes to the British people deciding who can come to live and settle in the United Kingdom”.
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“Our own law has been tested recently and our Supreme Court opined that our law was right and prisoners shouldn’t have the vote, and that’s my view”.
