For the first time in its 53-year existence, the European Court of Justice has given the Commission in Brussels the power to impose criminal sanctions. In a landmark ruling that is as ominous as it is deluded, the Luxembourg-based court yesterday overruled the governments of EU member states, removing from them the sole right to impose their own penalties on people or companies breaking the law, and giving the unelected EU Commission an unprecedented role in the administration of criminal justice.

The pretext for this transparent attempt at empire-building beyond the boundaries laid down for Europe’s bureaucrats was the claim by Brussels that it had the right to insert criminal penalties into laws to protect the environment. The Commission said that unless it did so, its attempt to halt cross-border pollution would be ineffective. But in 2001, 11 of the 15 members, including Britain, insisting that only a national government had the right to fine or jail its citizens, vigorously opposed this action. Instead they proposed a “framework decision”, excluding the Commission and including only governments, to deal with transgressors. The Commission called in the lawyers and, extraordinarily, the European Court agreed that it had the right to impose criminal sanctions.

This is a dangerous step in the wrong direction. The Commission, chafing at criticism that it is too powerful and too interfering, has been itching to reassert its authority. It is not a sovereign power but a civil service executive, supposedly appointed to serve EU common interests. In recent years the Commission has worried that its right to initiate legislation, under the Treaty of Rome, was being eroded. EU ministers, when discussing urgent issues such as terrorism, sometimes came up with their own proposals for new laws. But to retaliate by trespassing on the sole right of governments to imprison their citizens is a serious expansion of and misunderstanding of the Commission’s role.

The ruling also reveals the mindset of the court, and confirms the lingering suspicion that, when faced with a choice between subsidiarity or strengthening the EU’s federal powers it will, invariably, choose the latter. The decision highlights the contradiction at the court’s very heart — of course a federal court will expand federal powers. It gives substance to all the worries in Britain and those countries that have voted against the EU constitution that any point vague enough to require legal clarification would always prompt a ruling reinforcing the EU’s central bureaucracy and federal power. This lamentable judgment strikes at the heart of national sovereignty and Britain’s ability to decide the law for itself.

The Commission is entitled to argue that draft laws should be effective. But it is up to elected national governments to define and enforce the law. Already, elated Commission officials are proposing similar criminal penalties in other areas. It is not their right. Democracy yesterday suffered a grievous defeat in a court whose contempt for sovereignty verges on the criminal.