My Spanish Liberal MEP colleague, Ignasi Guardens, has started a potentially major court case. You may not know that the stringent new regulations for airport security, brought in last year all over Europe, which include the ban on carrying liquids, are an EU law. But it was not passed properly in the opinion of MEPs.

 The correct EU law-making procedure is that the two chambers, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, must agree. In this case, the ministers refused to give us all the details, claiming high security. They announced it as if it were a law. But MEPs believe it is not because we have never been given access to all its details.

 Ignasi, at a Spanish airport, challenged the right of an official to order him to remove his shoes before passing through the security arch. The “law” says that the officials are only entitled to demand shoes be removed if an alarm has sounded, not before. Ignasi, a valiant defender of basic rights, removed his shoes but is taking a case against the airport officials to the Spanish courts, and hopes that the Spanish constitutional court will rule that the EU law is unconstitutional because it was “passed” in secret. The case will then make its way to Europe’s supreme court, the Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

 The “law” is an EU regulation - which means it has to be the same in all 27 EU member states, with no right for any state to add to it or subtract from it. But, of course if you argue, airport officials can make you miss your flight!

There is an interesting and important balance involved here: national security against the right of the citizen to have laws passed correctly.