EU Court allows laser tag ban

Thursday, 4 November 2004, 22:03

The Eurosceptic British press is unlikely to pounce on the European Court of Justice’s decision last month that EU law does not prevent national governments from banning “laser tag”-style games which “simulate homocide”.

A logical consequence of this decision is that nothing would prevent a national government from banning, say, paintball, or supersoakers. It wouldn’t take much creative distortion to transform that into a tabloid headline screaming “EU bans squirt guns!”

Still, this sort of story wouldn’t fit the Eurosceptic agenda. All the European Court has ruled is that this matter doesn’t concern EU law and therefore falls under national sovereignty. This just doesn’t fit the Euromyth narrative, in which “Brussels” is the fount of all petty, politically-correct bureaucratic meddling and EU law is ever-expanding at the expense of national judicial sovereignty. But if anybody is guilty of illiberal regulation in this instance, it is a district council in Germany, not any institution of the European Union. And the EU top tribunal has ruled that there’s nothing Brussels can do to stop it.

Entry Filed under: European Union