Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-291"
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"en.20010404.12.3-291"2
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".
Mr President, I shall do my best. This report is on the proposal for a Council decision on four programmes to do with cooperation and exchange in the area of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. To recap: GROTIUS is a programme of cooperation between legal practitioners with a budget of EUR 8.8 million. OISIN is a programme of cooperation between law enforcement authorities with a budget of EUR 8 million. STOP is a programme to coordinate action to combat the trade in human beings and the sexual exploitation of children with a budget of EUR 6.5 million and HIPPOCRATES is a new programme concerned mainly with training for the prevention of crime and is to be allocated a budget of EUR 2 million. Including HIPPOCRATES is a good idea insofar as fundamental aspects of the programme, such as its duration, access and funding rules, tally with the proposals in the other programmes.
The Commission proposal suggests extending the method of cooperation between national contact points to civil and commercial matters, a measure long overdue in my view. I welcome this project as an opportunity to simplify judicial cooperation between Member States and, more importantly, to facilitate cross-border legal procedures. The activities of the network should, in the final analysis, benefit the citizens; improving judicial cooperation is merely a half-way objective, the final objective being to create an area of justice for our citizens, which is why the Committee’s proposed amendments specify that citizens should be able to take recourse to the courts and authorities in any Member State as easily as they can in their own, thereby incorporating in the proposal the objective formulated by the European Council in the Tampere milestones. The basic objective should be to guarantee proper access to the law and fast, reliable procedures.
I also see this network as an accompanying instrument for the purpose of implementing the Brussels II Convention. In order to learn from the experience of the judicial network in criminal matters, the new network needs to cooperate closely with the contact points of the judicial network in criminal matters. It would also be a good idea if the secure electronic information exchange system to be set up were based on the current administrative electronic data exchange programme. Here again, I would stress that candidate countries should be included at the earliest possible opportunity.
A central, electronic EU index of legal cases and a data bank containing a register of judgments would be invaluable to courts and persons taking recourse to the law. A detailed proposal on this has already been submitted. I am grateful for the amendments proposed by Mrs Wallis, which helped to clarify the text, and I am grateful for the support for my amendments in committee. I cannot support Amendment No 8 limiting the number of participants and agree with the Commission here. Nor was anyone able to convince me of the merit of Amendment No 13 on a pilot project within this network.
The Commission has proposed extending the GROTIUS, OISIN and STOP multi-annual programmes by a further two years. In principle, we should vote in favour of extending these programmes because they have proven to be conducive – even though not all the Member States take part in them – to effective cooperation in combating and preventing crime, thereby helping to implement the Tampere conclusions.
The Commission’s implementation reports confirm that the programme objectives have been achieved. However, an external study has highlighted persistent weaknesses in the implementation of the three programmes, for example in connection with the management and dissemination of the project results. There is also some doubt as to whether the mobilisation of project agencies has been improved by reducing the cofinancing limit from 80% to 70%.
I am in favour of including candidate countries in these programmes at the earliest possible opportunity, simply because the reform of the police and judiciary in these countries leaves a great deal to be desired. I should therefore like them involved at the earliest possible opportunity.
The only real exception which I take to the Commission proposal concerns the time scale. I would have liked a single framework programme to have been submitted now. I am positive that, with greater commitment on the Commission’s part, this would have been feasible. The Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs would have liked a more comprehensive and ambitious programme from the Commission.
There are reasons against continuing various funding programmes separately from one another. It is difficult to allocate a project to a specific funding programme if it relates to a general subject, such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights, or to several technical areas at once or involves both Member States and candidate countries.
Running individual programmes in parallel increases the probability of conflicting aims and makes it difficult to carry out a financial evaluation and check the coherence of individual programmes with the general objectives of the Union. It is also difficult for Parliament to keep track of the programmes.
The fact that most funding is for third party projects begs the question of whether the institutions have no priorities of their own which require funding. I am thinking here, for example, of asylum seekers, of victims of crime or projects to improve infrastructure. In addition, a separate budget has been proposed for pilot projects. The Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs therefore proposes that plenary support the Commission proposals but, at the same time, calls on the Commission to present a proposal well before the end of 2001, consolidating all the initiatives designed to create an area of freedom, security and justice on the basis of Title VI of the Treaty on European Union and Title IV of the Treaty establishing the European Community, in order to strengthen citizens’ rights and fundamental rights. So much for this aspect.
Now to the European Judicial Network in civil and commercial matters. It was decided to set up a judicial network in criminal matters back in 1998. This network operates via national contact points which advise and support local authorities. Following teething troubles of a mainly technical and linguistic nature, the network now helps considerably in simplifying cross-border investigations into criminal offences."@en1
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