A Liberal Democrat MEP’s enthusiasm for giving even more powers to the EU has seen him call for it to have its own FBI-style law-enforcement agency - with sweeping powers to intervene in criminal investigations across the continent
In an interview with America's NBC news website, Bill Newton Dunn the East Midlands MEP, insisted that a Europe-wide police force was necessary to counter cross-border crime - and even claimed the move would save money.
The proposal was described as "federalism gone mad" by Birmingham MEP, Anthea McIntyre.
Miss McIntyre, a member of the European justice and home affairs committee and the West Midlands Conservative spokesman, said: "This is a prime example of Liberal Democrats letting their federalist ambitions get the better of them.
"Lib-Dems seem to believe that the EU must be turned into a European super state with all the trappings of statehood - president, foreign policy, diplomatic service, army and police force.
"The answer to the problems of cross-border crime are closer co-operation and co-ordination between national forces, and more-sophisticated sharing of intelligence. Not a huge Europe-wide bureaucracy and police force.
"You can imagine how our own excellent police service would react to a Euro-FBI barging in with powers to over-rule them, to interfere in their work or even take over their investigations. That is how the FBI operates in the USA.
"Europe does not need a federal police force modelled on the FBI because it is not a federal state. "