---

Protection of Critical Infrastructure

As I think will be clear to anyone who has read the original Commission proposal, the Green Paper and indeed the directive, although the Commission’s list of elements on which it wants a common European position includes postal services—which are not obviously critical to security—it also includes armed forces. I know that the proposal by the Commission was rebuffed by the Government, and I hope it will not appear again, because it was over-ambitious; but what about the channel tunnel? It is a critical piece of infrastructure linking two countries, and only two countries. Would the Government draw a red line around that, and say that they would not allow it to be ruled on by the Commission or the European Court of Justice?