Commentary
Section 1: The Accession Treaty
12.Subsection (1) amends section 1(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 (c.68), so as to include the new Accession Treaty within the list of treaties implemented by the 1972 Act in UK law.
13.Subsection (2) approves, for the purpose of section 12 of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 (c.24), the provisions of the Accession Treaty insofar as they relate to the powers of the European Parliament. Section 12 of that Act requires that a treaty which provides for any increase in the powers of the European Parliament must be approved by an Act of Parliament before being ratified by the United Kingdom.
14.Two provisions of the Protocol and three provisions of the Act of Accession, annexed to the Accession Treaty, affect the powers of the European Parliament. Article 9 of the Act specifies the number of representatives allocated to each of the 27 Member States with effect from the start of the 2009-2014 parliamentary term. Article 21 of the Protocol and Article 24 of the Act perform the same task for the transitional period from the date of accession until the election of the new Parliament. Article 43 of the Protocol and Article 43 of the Act require that the European Parliament makes the necessary adaptations to its rules of procedure. Although none of these provisions create new powers for the Parliament, they have the effect of applying existing powers to persons to whom they could not otherwise have been applied prior to the entry into force of the Accession Treaty. For this reason, approval is required under the 2002 Act.
Section 2: Freedom of movement for workers
15.This section provides a power for the Secretary of State to make regulations implementing the transitional arrangements concerning the free movement of Bulgarian and Romanian workers. It achieves this in the following way:
Subsection (1) – allows for regulations to make provision concerning the entitlement of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals to enter or reside in the UK as workers.
Subsection (2) – states that such regulations may provide that an enactment relating to the rights of nationals of the European Economic Area (EEA) to enter or reside in the UK in order to work (the “specified enactment”), applies (with or without modifications) to nationals of Bulgaria and Romania; the general free movement rights of EEA nationals are currently implemented in the UK by the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2000 (SI 2000/2326)(1) (as amended) and the transitional provision made in relation to workers from eight of the States that acceded to the EU in 2004 are set out in the Accession (Immigration and Worker Registration) Regulations 2004 (SI 2004/ 1219) (as amended);
Subsections (3) and (4) – provide that regulations under the section may, in particular, require Bulgarian and Romanian workers to be registered, require a fee to be paid in relation to such registration (or applications for registration) and make it an offence (subject to the limits in subsection (4)) for an employer to employ such a worker unless authorised to do so under the regulations;
Subsection (5) – allows the regulations under section 2 to include incidental, supplementary, transitional or consequential provisions and to make different provisions for different cases; this would, for example, allow different provision to be made in relation to different economic sectors;
Subsections (6) to (9) - these subsections require regulations made under section 2 to follow the affirmative parliamentary procedure, which requires a draft of the regulations to be approved by both Houses of Parliament before they are made; if, however, regulations need to be made urgently (for example, to address serious disturbances to the UK labour market) regulations can be made and then approved by Parliament within 40 days (in computing the 40 day period no account is to be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days, as provided for in section 7(1) of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946).
The European Economic Area currently comprises the twenty-five Member States of the EU, together with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
