Tangled Metal wrote: Germany and France for example are serial offenders with uk one of the most law abiding nations. Hypocrisy is common among sovereign nations.
Or their companies are just serial litigators and/or the public authorities less likely to settle. Most ECJ cases are initiated by private parties, i.e. a company feeling it's lost out on some public funding or other. That makes it rather hard to compare actual numbers of infringements given differing rates of both legal actions being initiated and public bodies backing down & re-tendering or settling vs challenging all the way to the ECJ.
Jdsk wrote:Thanks... but my question was about whether "democracy" gives carte blanche to Governments.
For the UK the power to make treaties comes from the Crown not from any recognisable democratic process.
I don't think 'democracy' makes any difference, governments technically have carte blanche anyway. Technically is somewhat irrelevant though and it's the geopolitical consequences that matter far more. As far as those goes, bending minor rules occasionally isn't likely to net the same response as trying to scrap parts of an agreement the very same government not only agreed to just months earlier but also publicly sold it as an excellent deal whilst trying to negotiate another deal with the same group, numerous other deals with other countries and threatening a relatively significant treaty (GFA) that has reasonably heavy investment from the powerful USA who we're also hoping for a deal with. The only conclusions to draw from that is that our politicians are either deeply untrustworthy, or too stupid/lazy/arrogant to read the couple of hundred pages of agreement they're just about to sign and the idiot friendly briefings of the consequences of that agreement prepared by a doubtless weary and exasperated civil service.
True Carte blanche is only really an option if the country is a superpower, or a pariah that doesn't care.
Jdsk wrote:Meanwhile over at the unelected second chamber:
And that's probably a constitutional clash in the making. The government thinks this is a manifesto commitment, the lords does not so will see no reason to back down.