Interesting times ahead in civil liberties in the post-Lisbon treaty era? An interesting analysis from the Centre for European Reform:

The new politics of EU internal security:

This is area of international co-operation that has long been the exclusive domain of national governments. For over 20 years, interior ministries – meeting in the EU, UN and Council of Europe – have quietly agreed and implemented inter-governmental agreements on internal security and judicial co-operation between themselves. There was little need to accommodate outside views and concerns. Now officials look nervously to 2009 when euro-parliamentarians should begin to use their new authority.

The ministries are right to be anxious. The European Parliament’s civil liberties and justice and home affairs (JHA) body – known as the LIBE committee – has made no secret of its intention to exercise the new powers to the full. The committee wants to reverse a trend in EU decision-making on terrorism, crime and immigration that many parliamentarians feel is wrongly skewed towards state security at the expense of civil liberties. For example, MEPs have been wary of the member-states’ eagerness to create databases and new information-sharing arrangements for terrorism and other cross-border crimes. They complain that the member-states are conspicuously less interested in reaching an agreement on data protection legislation needed to ensure such data is not mis-used.

That is, of course, after Ireland is coaxed into a ‘yes’ vote on the Lisbon treaty itself.

There has not been much debate on the costs of intergovernmentalism, and Council dominance in these areas of European integration. In Britain particularly, justice and home affairs is the area where national governments have been most keen to be seen to preserve national vetoes.

Perhaps as Lisbon rolls out, the parameters of the debate will change as the benefits of European Parliament involvement become clear.