Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-13-Speech-1-073"
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"en.20001113.6.1-073"2
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".
Mr President, I would very quickly like to begin by thanking Mrs Gebhardt for her excellent report and by saying that the Commission endorses almost all of the points that have fuelled her reflections.
I will take the opportunity – since several Members have raised very delicate issues – to tell you quite frankly that, as Mr Coelho has just said, we primarily view this initiative as an opening initiative that demonstrates the political will of the Council to make up the ground lost in the field of judicial cooperation in comparison to police cooperation. I say to you quite candidly that I fail to understand how this initiative for judicial cooperation at the level of Eurojust can be seen as an attack on, or a threat to, the guaranteeing and protection of fundamental rights. It has to be said that either we subscribe to the democratic model with which we are familiar, one based on the division of powers, and one which recognises that the courts have supreme authority when it comes to guaranteeing individual rights, and we acknowledge that European judicial cooperation in criminal matters consists precisely of reinforcing coordination between European courts in their capacity of protectors of fundamental rights – and this is the model to which I personally subscribe – or we can choose not to subscribe to this model and, in that case, I fail to understand how one can see this initiative for developing a common judicial area as posing any threat to guarantees on fundamental rights.
Let us be quite clear about this. We are not in the process of harmonising European criminal law with a sledgehammer. What the Tampere Summit required us to do was to adopt, with a view to combating cross-border crime, transnational rules in areas where it is recognised that the transnationality, or if you like the supranationality, of legal instruments constitutes added value in terms of combating illegal and criminal acts that are supranational by nature. Criminals must be left in no doubt as to this supranationality.
That is why when we were asked at Tampere for common rules in the field of indictment and penalties for crimes against the environment, drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, child pornography, terrorism or Internet crime, it was because it was recognised that these were types of supranational criminal activities which had to be dealt with using supranational instruments.
However, since with Eurojust we are talking about the coordination of national public prosecutors and judges in order to combat all forms of serious crime – and on this point I agree with the approach taken by the rapporteur – this concept is being enlarged: we are no longer talking solely about cooperation on purely transnational crimes, but also about cooperating to counteract criminal activities. Such would be the case, for example, with a criminal who commits a crime in one Member State and then seeks refuge in another Member State, as their crime has been a serious one. We are therefore entering the realms of the fight against legal
insecurity in global terms, but are doing so with respect not only for substantive laws, but also for national procedural laws. That implies the actions taken by every judge being in line with their national legal systems and jurisdiction for acting against and combating this type of crime falling within the national legal framework of each Member State.
It is for this reason that I fail to see in this the advent of a ‘Big Brother’-style European judicial system. I do not even see in it – unfortunately, I might add – the advent of a European public prosecutor, because as you know, the Commission has proposed creating the office of European public prosecutor, but not in this context or to deal with these matters. The Commission’s proposal was highly targeted and was submitted to the appropriate body: the Intergovernmental Conference. What was it that the Commission proposed? The creation of the office of European public prosecutor in order to guarantee protection of the European Community’s financial interests. In this area we can indeed talk of a European public prosecutor.
But as concerns Eurojust, this is a network for coordinating the actions of national judges and public prosecutors with the objective of enhancing capabilities for combating types of serious crime at European level. And this is why I also see in this an important tool for ensuring judicial control of Europol. It was, in fact, made quite clear at Tampere that Eurojust would be Europol’s judicial counterpart. That means that investigations and criminal proceedings that can count on the involvement of Europol must be flanked and followed up by Eurojust, acting as a network of judges and public prosecutors at European level. It is for this reason that the mutual relationships between Eurojust, Europol and OLAF, in its role as a specialist body for combating fraud, and the existing European judicial network must be clearly defined.
The Commission welcomes your report, Mrs Gebhardt. I hope that Parliament will adopt it. We will have the opportunity to make our commitment to this provisional unit from 1 January 2001, but the Commission wants to sustain the debate on the form that the definitive Eurojust unit will take. That is why we will be presenting to the Council and European Parliament a proposal for a Communication on the definitive judicial cooperation unit, in order to have as swiftly as possible an outline, a foretaste, of what the definitive version of the Eurojust network will look like."@en1
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