Why we must stay in the European Atomic Energy Community.

Few Londoners could have missed the headline on the front of the Evening Standard on 10 July 2017: “Cancer patients in Brexit scare.” The headline arose from a warning by the Royal College of Radiologists that the UK’s proposed withdrawal from Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community) threatened the supply of some widely used medical radioisotopes. Government ministers dismissed it, describing it as scaremongering. The Euratom treaty was signed by the original members of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, with the UK acceding to it when it joined the EEC in 1973. Euratom, the EEC, and the European Coal and Steel Community formed what came to be referred to as the European Communities. All three were brought together in 1992, in the Maastricht treaty, when the European Union was created. Euratom, retained a distinct legal identity, reflecting sensitivities about nuclear power at the time, but it is still subject to the European Court of Justice. This is where the problem lies. Euratom barely featured in the Brexit referendum campaign. An 86 page House of Lords report on science and Brexit, published in April 2016, mentioned it only in passing. A similar report from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, in November 2016, did not mention it at all. Subsequently, Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave (the official campaign for Brexit), described politicians seeking to withdraw from Euratom as “morons.” Since the referendum the prime minister, Theresa May, has offered her own interpretation of what people were voting for, such as leaving the single market and customs union, even though neither appeared on the ballot paper. But including withdrawal from Euratom seems somewhat of a stretch, given it appeared only as a footnote to the explanatory notes accompanying the parliamentary bill to invoke Article 50, signifying the UK’s intention to leave the EU. Withdrawal was, however, inevitable, once May had rejected any role for the European Court of Justice in the UK’s future relations with the EU. Medical implications