Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-028"
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"en.20001003.2.2-028"2
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"Mr President, I should like to say one word to the President of the Commission, Mr Prodi. All I can say to your speech is: finally! Like many here, I have waited a long time for this clear statement.
Mr Moscovici, from the outset the European Parliament has called for the Charter of Fundamental Rights to be incorporated in the Treaties, for it to be made legally binding and – when it is infringed – for people to be given recourse to the European Court of Justice. This demand is not a political position of any kind. It results necessarily from the nature of the matter, from the essence of fundamental rights, and it corresponds to the expectations and requirements of the people. Can you even proclaim rights in earnest without enshrining them in law? Can you proclaim rights in earnest, but at the same time refuse to declare them part of your own law? Can you recognise fundamental rights but deny people the instruments and means to defend them?
Each article of this Charter is already enshrined in international conventions, in the constitutions of the Member States, in international law or in EU treaties and protocols. None of them contain anything new. They represent the sum total of a 200-year tradition of fundamental rights in Europe. The only question which needs to be resolved is whether the European Union and its institutions are – like the Member States – going to submit to this European tradition of fundamental rights.
Can it, Mr Moscovici, be true that governments are afraid of making long attested rights into internal European law which is actually in force and can be upheld by the courts? If so, would the European Council and the governments of the Member States not be admitting to the whole world that all these international conventions have for decades been regarded as political confessional literature without any legal weight? Would that not then arouse the suspicion amongst the people that the European Council and the governments of the Member States were trying to omit the section on governmental cooperation from the Charter on Fundamental Rights and protect their own power and their own absolute power from principles of the rule of law, judicial supervision and rules on fundamental rights? That is the suspicion which persists!
Minister Moscovici, surely it is a little comical for the Heads of State and Government to wish to proclaim rights of defence against the State. It is a matter for parliaments to proclaim fundamental rights and to enshrine them in law. But I believe that in this situation the governments and the European Council would be well advised to regard Parliament's vote in favour of legal validity and incorporation into the Treaties as an extremely weighty argument and to accede to this demand."@en1
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