The noose closes round British government

Open Europe has released the Presidency's list of unfinished business to be dealt with once the Constitution has been smuggled through.

As well as terms and conditions for the President and the Foreign Minister, it includes the structure, operation and field of action of Europol, the new powers and operation of Eurojust ("We could compel the British police to make a prosecution"), the rules governing the European Public Prosecutor and its functions, and the powers of the new sinister-sounding "Operational Committee on Internal Security", or COSI. (The portentous apparatus for common defence and foreign policies will probably prove an expensive farce.)

The final blueprint for COSI's extensive powers has yet to be finalised, however. Negotiations on the issue will take place in the second half of this year - after the planned ratification of the Treaty in the House of Commons, meaning MPs will not know what they have signed up to. Talks on COSI will be held in secret. Waterfield cites leaked internal EU documents, circulated almost three years ago which admitted that "the exact nature of the committee cannot be discerned by reading" the relevant clause of the Treaty - and no new work to clarify the issue has been carried out since.

Tony Bunyan, of the Statewatch civil liberties group, has warned that if the Government "gets its way we will see an EU Interior Ministry without any democratic control. It is quite outrageous that the role of the new EU internal security committee is being decided in secret. If COSI becomes a high-level legislative body, as well being in charge of operational matters, a whole swathe of decision-making and practice will be removed from democratic debate and discussion."

Open Europe also picks up a Handelsblatt report that "the Commission is holding back plans for controversial legislation until after the revived Constitutional Treaty has been ratified. Plans to harmonise Europe's corporate tax base are also being held back.

"The controversial Health Directive will be reintroduced only once ratification is complete, as both the UK and Ireland are opposed." And we already know a group of cancer specialists have for some reason called for EU involvement in cancer care in Europe ... as if we were to be ruled by all-wise philosopher kings.

But they were only ever a doctrinaire philosophers' ignorant fantasy. Our new politburo believe in "Global Warming", Kyoto and biofuels. Nothing seems to attract their regulatory zeal like obsolete or half-understood science.

And there will be nothing we can do about it. Just pay the ever increasing - and largely pointless - bills, as our freedom drains away.