THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
Purely as a matter of fact, having talked during the past week with several pro- and anti-Market MPS, I report deepening despond- ency in the pro-Market ranks. 'The thing is slipping away. Ted isn't doing anything to help us', said a gloomy Marketeer. Despite the silences of Ted, some things are being done behind the scenes. The legal and constitutional position has been closely looked into, and I gather upon eminent authority that it is the received view that entry will not itself produce any great tech- nical legal problems. Our adherence to the Treaty of Rome could be accompanied by a fairly straightforward Act of Parliament which would, in effect, contain the general provision that wherever conflict existed be- tween our own statute and case law and the laws of the European Economic Community, then those of the EEC would prevail. Eventu- ally, a noble legal luminary predicted, the European Court would, by acting as a final court of appeal from the various appellant courts of the member states, become some- thing like the Supreme Court of the United States of America, creating, by its interpreta- tion of the Treaty Of Rome, a body of new and binding law much as the Supreme Court in Washington, by interpreting the constitu- tion of the United States, has done.
Incidentally, he thought that quite the most intractable immediate problem follow- ing an entry would be that of migrant labour. As things stand at present within the com- munity, under the Treaty, workers freely moving from one country to another (as they are entitled to do) can, and do, pick and choose for themselves the best parts of the social services of both their native and their host countries.
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