Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-102"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Members of the Council, I wish to begin by thanking Mr Posselt for having tabled the oral question that has formed the basis for this debate. In answering the questions he has raised, I shall not focus on what was done in 2000, because an exhaustive and rigorous assessment of this subject has already been made by the representatives of the Council. First and foremost, I wish to outline the most important landmarks in the process of preparing for the Laeken European Council, which is the occasion that has been chosen for the first in-depth assessment of the results we have achieved in implementing the Tampere mandate. 1999 was a turning point in the field of justice and home affairs. 2000 marked the beginning of the implementation of the Tampere mandate.
In the field of the mutual recognition of judgments, I simply wish to inform Parliament that we are working on a major package in the field of extradition and the European search and arrest warrant, as well as a package dealing with the mutual recognition of judgments in criminal matters, specifically protective orders in investigations carried out within the fight against cybercrime. In civil matters, by the end of the year, we will be supplementing the ‘BrusselsI’ initiative with a proposal for a European enforcement order in civil matters, and with additional initiatives from ‘Brussels-II’ on the mutual recognition of judgments in the field of family law, in domestic issues and matters concerning parental power and the issuing of proposals on the recognition of low-value claims and undisputed claims.
With regard to the interinstitutional dialogue, Mr President, the Commission wishes to confirm here that the dialogue between the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament is essential to a successful outcome. In this field, the Commission and Parliament must be given a greater role to play in the democratic control of Europol. This is another initiative that the Commission will be adopting in the course of this year. We have an ambitious programme and I am confident that the Swedish and Belgian Presidencies will ensure that the right pace is set for us to achieve a favourable outcome at Laeken. I should like to conclude by simply expressing the Commission’s appreciation to Parliament, and particularly to the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, in the person of its chairman, Mr Watson, for the way in which you have responded, sometimes with very little time, to requests concerning the Commission’s proposals and those of the Member States. If there have been delays, they are certainly not due to a lack of proposals or opinions issued by Parliament. Secondly, I should like to reiterate the Commission’s desire to deepen political dialogue with the European Parliament so that together we can find the best solutions, which will, in this House, enjoy the broad political support of the various European political families. I respect the diversity of Parliament’s political and ideological opinions, but we do have a common objective, which is to convey to the people of Europe a clear political message that meets their expectations. This is a simple message: the European institutions make a decisive contribution to confirming freedom, security and justice as inseparable values, true cornerstones laid out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and which express what we have in common and what we can be proud of. Let us take pride in our European identity.
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In the Commission’s opinion, it is no exaggeration to say that we have made a good start. We feel that we have made a proposal for a scoreboard with whose structure and content you are all familiar and I shall therefore not go into this in detail. Through this scoreboard, however, we will be able to identify, transparently, clearly and with a sense of responsibility, the progress as well as the delays in the way we are implementing the Tampere mandate. I shall, therefore, not be referring to the scoreboard’s content, but I do wish to begin by referring to an issue raised by Mr Posselt; that of drafting an annual budget on progress made in consolidating the area of freedom, security and justice.
The Commission takes the view that a dynamic scoreboard such as we would wish this to be responds to Mr Posselt’s concern. I think, however, that we can improve the scoreboard in two ways: firstly, by strengthening the political dimension of the part of the process we have already completed when we introduce each revised version of the scorecard at the end of each presidency. Secondly, improvements can be made by adapting the very structure of the scoreboard in future editions, particularly in the light of the outcome of the Laeken European Council, so that the scoreboard also reflects the way in which each Member State is implementing decisions taken at European level within its own national law.
I acknowledge that, although we have made a good start, we are entitled to have conflicting feelings about the Union’s decision-making power in this field. Here we are faced with two problems that I see no reason to hide. The first concerns the myriad initiatives of the Member States, the reasoning behind which sometimes escapes us. It is not my intention to question the Member States’ right of initiative. Consolidating an area of freedom, security and justice can only be achieved through close cooperation between all the Union’s institutions and also – and perhaps most importantly – between the Member States. The Commission does share Parliament’s concerns, however, about the sometimes fragmented approach to many of the Member States’ initiatives, and the danger that they will fail to provide added value to our common project. I am not questioning the good intentions behind these initiatives, but they are sometimes rather unfocused; if they are in line with the priorities of the European common agenda, these initiatives will be welcome. If, however, these initiatives simply serve each Member State’s internal political agenda of the day, then I am afraid that they will not help us to fulfil the very demanding programme laid down in Tampere.
Hence the Commission’s willingness to explore all avenues for improving cooperation with Member States in exercising legislative initiative. Secondly, and it is worth saying this now, in advance of Laeken, we risk facing delays in meeting the Tampere timetable. Unless the Council’s pace and decision making pick up, in other words, if we maintain our current speed, when we reach Laeken, we will be lagging a long way behind the objectives outlined in Tampere. I am therefore greatly encouraged by the discussion held at the initiative of the Swedish Presidency, which I welcomed, at the informal Stockholm Council on the need to speed up the pace of decision making and the need to improve the Commission’s working methods. The Commission is willing to play its part, under the leadership of the Swedish Presidency, in this task of discussing and streamlining the Council’s methods for taking action.
With regard to the specific questions raised by Mr Posselt, I shall be very brief. In the field of transposing the Community acquis into national law, it must be said that, where the conventions of the third pillar are concerned, only one has been signed and ratified by all Member States and that is the Europol Convention. None of the other conventions has, to date, been signed and ratified by all 15 Member States. With regard to the framework decisions, it is too early to talk about their transposal because they are still very recent and there are not yet enough of them to be able to produce an assessment report.
On the second question, concerning a common immigration policy, the Commission has already contributed, in the communication it submitted to the Council and to Parliament in November of last year, to what can be considered to be the basis of such a policy, which is the creation of a European concept of immigration and of a vision for framing an immigration policy. In this communication, we focused on two objectives. The first of these was a raft of legislative initiatives establishing a common Community acquis and the second was the launch of a process of open coordination within the Council to coordinate the management of migration flow policies. We presented a proposal on family reunification, which I hope will be adopted during the Swedish Presidency. We also presented a proposal on the rights and responsibilities of third-country nationals who are long-term residents. In July, we shall be presenting a proposal on conditions for the admission of immigrants for purposes of work and, at the end of the year, we shall be presenting an additional proposal on the admission of citizens of third countries for the purpose of study, training or for other purposes.
By July of this year, the Commission intends to put forward a proposal to make the method for open coordination in the field of immigration policy operational, with a view to this being up and running in 2002, in parallel with the Swedish Presidency’s initiative to improve our statistical mechanisms in the field of immigration. At the same time, the new Odysseus programme will enable us to launch a programme of administrative cooperation between the Member States and we hope to launch the bases of what will be the creation of a common border police force, as mentioned by Mr Posselt. In the field of immigration, I do not think that we should ignore the prospect of a proactive policy of integrating immigrant communities into the reception societies. We must therefore explore all the options contained in the anti-discrimination package that the Commission presented last year and, at the same time, build on the immigration component in the Lisbon strategy, confirmed in Stockholm, of combating social exclusion. In this policy of integrating immigrants, we must be able to count on the commitment and support of the Member States’ regions and local authorities. With regard to illegal immigration, the Commission has already presented two proposals for a framework decision on the trafficking of human beings and intends to present two communications. One of these will concern the fight against illegal immigration and the other will be on repatriation policies. I shall conclude this point by emphasising my hope that following the Conference being organised by the Belgian Presidency, we may see political agreement on the overall concept of European immigration policy at the Laeken Council, so that, from then on, no more excuses are given for the lack of a joint vision preventing us from adopting practical legislative measures.
In the field of asylum, I wish to point out that the Commission has embraced the principle of solidarity, both in its proposal on the ‘European Refugee Fund’ and in its proposal on ‘Temporary Protection’ based on the principle of ‘double voluntary action’. I hope that, under the leadership of the Swedish Presidency, we will be able to conclude a political agreement on temporary protection. I acknowledge, however, along with Mr Posselt, that the discussions in Council have not led to much opportunity for improving the financial dimension of solidarity and prove that the process of defining any form of imposing the distribution of asylum seekers amongst Member States will not be easy. The best solution to the problem of sharing responsibility is likely to be a common European asylum system based on the ideas outlined in the Commission’s communication of last November."@en1
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