It is for this very reason that the Daily Express warned against allowing crime-ridden Romania and Bulgaria full membership of the European Union.

Prior to these nations being admitted to the EU in January 2007, the authorities had at least a theoretical chance of protecting the British public from their large criminal elements.

Now that chance is gone. The case of Romanian fraudster Ioan Gureanu shows how EU enlargement has led to the victimisation of the British public.

Gureanu was deported at the end of a previous jail term for card fraud but swanned back into Britain late last year as a fully-fledged EU citizen.

Jailing him again yesterday, Judge David Paget told him: “You are nothing but a nuisance and detriment to this country. You cannot speak the language and you should be deported as you appear already to have been.”

The judge is quite right. But the shocking truth is that, thanks to the Government’s unforgivable complacency, there is almost nothing that can be done to prevent this prolific criminal getting on the first plane back to Britain.