Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-14-Speech-2-027"
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"en.20001114.2.2-027"2
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"Madam President, the draft European Parliament resolution on the Charter of Fundamental Rights has the same ambiguous foundation as the work of the body itself. In both cases, we are asked to approve texts without being told what they are to be used for. Are we talking about a political declaration? Is it an addendum to the Treaty? Is it the first part of a future constitution? We will find out at a later date, after Nice, no doubt. This uncertainty introduces a fundamental flaw into the consent given at the close of work within that body or in today’s votes. Some Members are trying to set their minds at rest thinking that a vote in favour does not commit us to anything, given that the Charter is going to remain nothing more than a formal declaration. A mistake! Because, at the very least, if this text is in fact adopted as it stands – and that is a crucial condition, to which I shall return – it will become binding, by virtue of the Court of Justice case law.
There are two aspects in this process which I find fascinating. Firstly, the Charter adopted in this way would take us directly to the sort of standardised Europe which the overwhelming majority of Members of this House claim to abhor and which the voters do not want at all. Tomorrow, however, the Court of Justice is going to be able to interpret these rights in detail and the Court’s case law is going to be applied in a standardised fashion throughout Europe, depriving each national democracy of its right of autonomous decision. Ladies and gentlemen, you will not be able to claim that you did not know this.
The second fascinating aspect is that we are today discussing human rights and citizens’ rights, a subject over which the European Union has no form of jurisdiction. Yet the Cologne Council, with the assistance of the Convention, doing a magnificent job of creating confusion, managed ultimately to make every one forget that this area lay within the jurisdiction of the national parliaments, and that jurisdiction is being gradually spirited out of the hands of these parliaments.
On the basis of the current treaties, today’s debate actually has no legitimacy whatsoever, and that is a poor omen for a Europe which claims to wish to ensure that fundamental rights are respected.
I therefore think, and I am addressing my remarks to the Council Presidency in particular at this point, that if the governments meeting in Nice adopt the Charter as a political declaration, they should preface it with some introductory note to the effect that defining and developing citizens’ rights lies, in all instances, within the exclusive remit of the national parliaments."@en1
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