Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-14-Speech-2-133"
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"en.20000314.8.2-133"2
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"Mr President, why do we need such a Charter? It clearly is not, as Mr Berthu has said, in order to create a European super-state but more, as Mrs Berès has said, to make it clear to today's citizens and tomorrow's citizens that what we are in now is a Community of values: values based on democracy, freedom, equality, solidarity and respect for diversity, values – and I stress this to Mrs Garaud – that unite Europeans across frontiers, from the north, the south, the east and the west of the Community. The big question is not whether we need such a Charter but what status it should have. Some have argued that the Charter should simply gather together in a readable form all the rights that currently exist within the European Union. This would be a valuable exercise: there is clearly a problem of awareness of people's rights. Many citizens do not know the rights that exist today. A document clearly laying out such rights, and making it clear where and how these rights could be exercised, would be valuable. But if that was all we were doing in the Convention then we should have left it to a team of academics, who frankly could have done it better than a group of 60 politicians.
I believe we have a team of 60 politicians working on the Convention because it is our duty to identify gaps in existing rights, to identify weaknesses in existing structures and to show the political will to correct those weaknesses. So the Charter must fill in any gaps in existing rights, and it must be binding on the institutions of the European Union.
However, it is clear that not all rights will be equal, at least in the way they are implemented. The rights need to be in two categories. There needs to be a list of rights which will be directly upheld by the courts, but there also needs to be another list of general rights which the Community institutions and others will have to take into account when drafting policies; some in the Court, some simply as background forming a valuable basis when we are taking other decisions. What is clear, and what unites most people in this Chamber who want such a Charter, is that it must be in the Treaties. If it is to impact on the citizen it must appear in the Treaties of the European Union."@en1
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