Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-14-Speech-2-146"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission would like to begin by warmly congratulating Mr Duff and Mr Voggenhuber for the excellent report they have presented and on the fact that the report before us today emphasises something undeniable: the process of drafting the Charter of Fundamental Rights is heralding in a new era in the building of Europe, like it or not.
I would like to make two more observations on the list of rights. The Commission would like to reiterate that it is favourable towards the idea of a charter encompassing both civil and political rights, as well as social rights and rights deriving from European citizenship. However, the Commission would like to see rights drafted on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights, whenever necessary, made innovative, to the extent that they update the 1950 drafting of the Rome Convention and respond to the new challenges of human rights as well as those resulting from information technology, bioethics, gender equality, as part of the fight against all forms of discrimination, and paying close attention to environmental protection.
Lastly, I would like to say that in our opinion, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights is not intended to replace either national constitutions or the European Convention on Human Rights. It has an obvious target, namely the Union’s institutions and the Member States, when they transpose the provisions of Community law into their respective national legal systems. It is also clear who the beneficiaries of this will be. Following the Tampere decision, it is the citizens of the Union’s Member States who will benefit from the Union’s fundamental laws, as well as the citizens of third countries who have permanent legal residence in EU countries, where the Heads of State and Government clearly said that they should have rights and obligations as similar as possible to the rights and obligations of the citizens of Member States.
I am sure that under this action plan, with closer collaboration between the Commission and the European Parliament, we will have a legal instrument that will banish the spectre created by the fear of contradictions and the spectre of the European superstate, but which will above all ensure that there is a legal system, based on fundamental rights, for the benefit of those on whose behalf we are all here – the citizens of our Union.
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I am convinced that the Union will accordingly accept its responsibilities towards the citizens of Europe, and will take a political initiative with a view to addressing the future political and moral legitimacy of the European Union itself. The goal just outlined both by Mr Duff and Mr Voggenhuber and by the representative of the Council Presidency will require us to make every effort to ensure that work in the Convention drafting the Charter of Fundamental Rights is concluded in time to be taken into consideration, both by the Intergovernmental Conference and by the Summit of Heads of State and Government at the end of this year.
The Commission would like to begin by emphasising the importance of the composition of the Convention drafting the Charter of Fundamental Rights, because for the first time, representatives of the Community institutions and of national institutions, from both the legislative and executive branches, have been brought together in a single body established by the European Council. This composition, which I believe to be a wise choice, covering both the Community and national domains as it does, will help to strengthen the legitimacy of the draft charter in the eyes of the general public, as well as guaranteeing the success of the work currently being done.
Once again, the Commission would like to make four key points quite clear to Parliament. The first is that in broad terms, the Commission agrees with and shares the European Parliament’s objectives with regard to the legal force of the charter, as regards calling for it to be incorporated into the Treaties and as regards the full range of laws to be incorporated into the Charter of Fundamental Rights. However, I think that the report before us today also emphasises that there are questions to be addressed directly to the Convention, that is questions for those drafting the Charter of Fundamental Rights. These include, for example, the issue of the list of rights to be included in the charter. But there are other issues which go beyond the Convention’s remit, and which are above all a matter for the Heads of State and Government meeting within the European Council, as well as for the Intergovernmental Conference itself.
The truth is that the Commission, as stated in Paragraph 14 of the resolution tabled by the European Parliament, takes the view that the legal force of the charter should be determined by the Nice European Council. However, the Commission believes that the process of drafting the charter must yield a clear and concise text perfectly accessible to the European public, but which is also drafted in rigorous legal terms that can be accepted as legally binding.
By the same token, the Commission feels that the Union must sign the European Convention on Human Rights, and that this is not a decision that can be taken by the Convention working on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It must be taken by the European Council, when it decides on the legal force of the charter. The Commission advocated this as long ago as 1979 and did so again in 1990. The idea that the European Union itself ought to sign the European Convention is also largely shared by the European Parliament.
Although the Court of Justice of the European Communities ruled in 1996 that the Community could not sign the European Convention on Human Rights, I must emphasise that it made such a ruling because there was no legal basis in the Treaties for the Community to do so. Now that we are revising the Treaties and at the same time a Charter of Fundamental Rights is being drafted, this is a good time to address both issues: a charter with legal force and a political decision for the Union to sign the European Convention on Human Rights.
I would also like to clearly state a second idea. There is no inherent contradiction between the Union having a Charter of Fundamental Rights and, at the same time, signing the European Convention on Human Rights. Quite the contrary. I would like to remind you that an extremely large majority of the political groups in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe three weeks ago adopted a recommendation that not only recognised and applauded the European Union’s initiative to provide itself with a Charter of Fundamental Rights, but which also supported and looked favourably on the European Union actually signing the European Convention on Human Rights.
Furthermore, I recommend that you carefully read the contribution of the observer representing the European Court of Human Rights in the Convention responsible for drafting the Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. In the statement by the Court of Human Rights itself, the Court’s representative expresses his support for the idea that the Union should have a Charter of Fundamental Rights and, secondly, that the Union should sign the European Convention on Human Rights. With regard to the issue of a conflict between the rulings of the Court in Strasbourg and rulings in Luxembourg, it is worth noting that today, under Community law, the Court of Justice of the European Communities always refers to the European Convention on Human Rights, to actual decisions by the European Court of Human Rights, as the source of inspiration for decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Communities on fundamental rights issues. This means that we are not talking about a revolution, but merely about enshrining in law what is today already practised in the Court of Justice of the European Communities in its relations with the European Convention on Human Rights itself and the Strasbourg Court."@en1
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