Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Wedderburn of Charlton (Labour). It was answered on Tuesday, 9 October 2007.

EU: Competition Policy

Question: My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend would be the first to accept that the Government have in mind the great difficulty of ever predicting any opinion that the European Court of Justice will ever hold. In that light, what is the Government’s confidence in predictions in this matter, given the arguments advanced in the European Court of Justice on the Viking case and other cases about to be decided by it, and confirmed by the Advocate General in that and another case, that the likely result will be that freedom of competition and so on will have to be balanced against a right to strike, used proportionately—whatever that means—at European level? That seems the view of most commentators who are expert in this field of what the Court is likely to give as its reasons in the next month or so.

Answer: My Lords, it is very difficult to speculate on what the Court will or will not do in the next few weeks. Again, my experience of the European Court of Justice is that speculation does not necessarily lead to the final determining decision. As my noble friend said, we shall have to look at what transpires in that individual case. As for the right to strike, noble Lords will know that in the protocol established around the Charter of Fundamental Rights those issues have been dealt with by the UK Government within the red lines.

Secondary information