How the McCann case highlights our true attitude towards EU membership

10th September 2007

The Madeleine McCann case highlights our true attitude towards membership of the European Union.

We think: "Why can't they get on top of this investigation?" They think: "Why don't they take their problems elsewhere and not destroy our tourist industry with their paedophile claims?"
We accept reluctantly a system imposed on us by politicians who concealed the loss of sovereignty it entailed, but Europe's still a them versus us affair.

Gordon Brown knows he'd have difficulty getting the new EU 'treaty' approved in a British referendum. That's why he's reluctant to have one.

Imagine how much more difficult it would be if the Portuguese drag Gerry and Kate McCann back to Praia da Luz and charge them with manslaughter.

For true believers in the EU, the investigation into a missing child should proceed in Praia da Luz in the same way it would in Pontypool. But it doesn't.

The Portuguese have their own way of doing things. And we appear to have no confidence in them. We'd prefer Madeleine's disappearance on May 3 to be investigated by British methods.
For instance, the crime scene - a holiday apartment - sealed and searched minutely, not given a once-over, with people tramping in and out, and afterwards re-let to holidaymakers.
Madeleine's aunt, Philomena McCann, said yesterday: "The crime scene was completely desecrated.

"Literally hundreds of people went into that apartment after Madeleine was abducted. It was at least two days before any fingerprinting was done."

The Portuguese investigation was agonisingly slow. British reporters on the scene described police activity as leisurely to non-existent. It's accepted here that the first hours in such an inquiry have to be the most intense.

The "scent of death" found in Madeleine's bedroom, on her cuddly toy, on Kate McCann's clothes and in the family's hire car - a vehicle rented weeks after Madeleine went missing - was detected by British scientists, who point out that there could be an innocent explanation.

But the McCanns say police are using it to try to force them to confess to killing their child.
Viewed from here, from day one the Portuguese investigation seemed clumsy and amateur.
Now that they've made Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate, official suspects - apparently on the basis of forensic evidence we helped them to gather and analyse - the British headlines reflect our doubts about the whole process.

While feeding titbits casting doubt on the McCanns to their own newspapers, Portuguese investigators were able to ban the couple from talking to the Press.

So the McCanns were unable to respond to lurid allegations other than taking legal action against one paper.

At first, police focused on a half-British man living there, Robert Murat, whom they named as an official suspect, or arguido. Their evidence?

Reporters told them he'd demonstrated an unnatural interest in the investigation. But that went nowhere, although he remains an arguido.

Not all of us think the McCanns innocent, of course. To some, their narrative has never rung true. Others think the McCanns should be prosecuted for leaving their sleeping children unsupervised.

But not even the anti-McCann group can applaud the Portuguese response to the disappearance of a three-year-old British girl.

Portugal is an old ally of Britain's, but the judicial process isn't the same. Portugal's derives from the nation's history and is matched to the nature of the country and its people. The same with ours.

This is why the EU's 'onesizefits-all' philosophy is so infuriating. A case like this exposes its weaknesses.

This isn't to say we can't co-operate with each other. As seagoing nations, Britain and Portugal have done so for centuries. And without British help, the police in Praia da Luz would have nothing to go on in the Madeleine case.

But would the 'evidence' they're using to make the McCanns official suspects warrant a prosecution here?

It's not that we're necessarily cleverer than the Portuguese. We do have our share of police malfunctions and malfeasance.

It's just that on occasions like this - the appalling loss of a child from an apparently respectable Roman Catholic family, whose doctor parents were comforted by the Pope but are now under suspicion - we are reminded that Europe is a continent of distinctly different nations.

We have been forced together by politicians who dream of enormous budgets, grand coalitions and world eminence, but have little time for recognising the forces that make nations act, and think, differently.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=480882&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=227&in_check=N