Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-27-Speech-3-009"
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"en.19991027.1.3-009"2
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"Madam President, Prime Minister Lipponen, I agree with the view that the European Council meeting at Tampere may be considered a historic occasion for the reason that, for the first time, the Council discussed the creation of an area of freedom, security and justice in the discussion, and put it at the top of the agenda. The issues discussed have great importance in the everyday lives of ordinary people and for companies as well. The Group of the European People’s Party and European Democrats finds that progress has been made in part, although we are also disappointed with how short the steps are that have been taken.
The major decision in the creation of the European area of justice was to make the mutual recognition of judicial decisions and sentences the foundation stone for legal cooperation within the Union, both in matters of civil and criminal law. A precondition for the continued support, by the people, of the principle of free movement, is that there needs to be better opportunities to obtain justice within the whole area of the Union. Improvement in police cooperation in practice and growing support for Europol will boost the investigation and prevention of crime. In this connection our group would like to say that legal cooperation must, however, lead the way for cooperation, and it is with satisfaction that it welcomes the cooperation of prosecuting authorities in the Eurojust scheme. We are nevertheless disappointed that the decisions of Tampere do not mention a European public prosecutor, whose field ought to have covered the fraudulent dealings behind the Community budget.
Our group agrees with the view of the Council that the Union and its Member States strengthen transparency of the Union through personal, cultural, political and economic relations with the rest of the world. This also relates to the fact that the right to seek asylum should be fully respected. We hope that the Council, with its decisions to ultimately create a common asylum-seeking process and a common status for those who have received asylum throughout the Union, has opened up the way for Europe to become a united area in matters of asylum and refugees. The meeting in Tampere did not take us quite that far; the resolutions merely refer to a common area.
Our group will use its opportunities to influence the Community budget for the creation of a basis for a European refugee fund. This is a matter that was only mentioned in the Council’s decisions, in which the Commission was urged to explore the possibility of considering some sort of reserve fund for situations where large groups of refugees are applying for temporary protection. The Council’s decisions contain no mention of how the financial burden caused by refugees and asylum seekers should be shared within the Union. Although the States of the Union now want to decide themselves ultimately who can settle in their territory, the longer-term aim must be a coherent policy and consequential share of costs.
Our group welcomes with satisfaction the composition of the institutional assembly that will work on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, believing that the strong parliamentarian dimension contained within it reflects the democratic implementation of EU development better than a conventional Intergovernmental Conference. We shall participate fully in the work of this institution.
Madam President, President-in-Office of the European Council, although I have made a few critical remarks, we consider the results of the Tampere meeting to be important, and our criticisms are targeted at the fact that the Council should aspire, in future, to yet more ambitious Community objectives. The decisions are, however, just words on paper. Now, we believe, it is important that the Council and the Commission attend to the implementation of the resolutions quickly. When the resolutions are passed back down from on high to the plain greyness of the Councils of the Ministers of the Interior and Justice, they also become run-of-the mill and nothing more happens for three or four years, Tampere will remain in history as the forum of unrealised declarations. This is what will happen, although the Council has borrowed a good idea from the world of business, the scoreboard, the actual term being a perfectly balanced scorecard. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, keep the momentum up."@en1
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