Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-191"
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"en.20010704.5.3-191"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first I want to congratulate Mr Cornillet, the rapporteur, and the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, on the high quality of the report submitted to Parliament today for its approval. Like my colleague, Mr Chris Patten, I want to join in the congratulations to Mr Louis Michel for the commitments he has just entered into as representative of the Council, in regard to the protection of fundamental rights, in foreign policy and in the Union’s domestic policy. In particular, let me draw your attention and thoughts to a highly significant phrase: “the Union should teach by example before it starts to preach.”
I hope the Belgian presidency will be able to examine these proposals rapidly, under the codecision procedure, since they are an important means of ensuring real freedom of movement and right of residence in the Member States.
Fundamental rights are, without doubt, the identity card of a European political and social model whose values we want to preserve, not for purely defensive reasons but mainly with a view to being proactive, while accepting the need to adapt them to a world undergoing profound change.
When we build Europe’s future we must place fundamental rights at the heart of the essential political compromise and show the prime role played by the dignity of the individual and by a humanist vision of the European political project. I hope that this new role that has now been assigned to fundamental rights will also be the key to restoring public enthusiasm for Europe.
The Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms drew up a most ambitious report this year, covering a wide range of fundamental rights. Clearly, it has achieved its objective. The report contains a highly detailed and extensive explanatory statement. It also includes a large number of pertinent recommendations, which would quite tangibly improve the protection of fundamental rights in the Union.
I also admire the structure of the report, which faithfully mirrors the structure of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. I think it was a very good idea to opt for that approach. Without doubt, it will help promote a community culture when it comes to the protection of fundamental rights. I personally am convinced that over the years this parliamentary report will become a prime means of ensuring the constant and objective evaluation of the situation of fundamental rights in the Union. We very much need this kind of evaluation if we want to maintain and develop the area of freedom, security and justice.
As we all know and like to repeat, fundamental rights really must be protected if we are to create an area that genuinely guarantees the free movement of persons. We actually have the necessary legal instruments to achieve this: the charter proclaimed at Nice, but also Article 6 of the EU Treaty, which refers to the European Convention on Human Rights and the constitutional tradition common to the Member States, together with Article 7 of that treaty, which will be further strengthened by the Nice Treaty when it enters into force.
We now need to acquire the instruments to conduct our policy. The Commission very warmly welcomes the various proposals set out in the report, in particular those on creating the technical tools to deliver expertise in this area. The Commission took careful note of the recommendations addressed to it more directly: the appointment of a Commissioner with responsibility for fundamental rights in the Union and the implementation of policies linked to the establishment of an area of freedom, security and justice, on the one hand, the reorganisation of the departments responsible for monitoring the charter, on the other hand. These two recommendations are undeniably logical and deserve serious thought. I can assure Mr Cornillet and Members that I will encourage the Commission to hold a political discussion on these two matters.
Turning to the first recommendation, I pointed earlier to the link between the protection of fundamental rights and establishing an area of freedom, security and justice. So I can only agree on the need to look at this subject in the context of the on-going reorganisation of the Commission following the changes brought about by the Treaty of Amsterdam, looking ahead to the entry into force of the provisions of the Nice Treaty and especially with a view to the forthcoming enlargement. I am in a position where I can well appreciate the real importance and necessity of these changes and of the new report on fundamental rights that the organs and institutions of the Union and the EU Member States will be drawing up pursuant to Article 7.
Coming now to the second recommendation, let me draw Parliament’s attention to an internal memo the Commission adopted last March calling on it to show strict respect for the charter in all its activities. In particular, the services in question were asked to ensure that texts proposed or adopted by the Commission were examined a priori for their consistency with the charter. A standard recital was to be introduced to ensure that this had been done in the case of proposals that clearly had a bearing on the protection of fundamental rights. This has in fact been done in the various proposals recently submitted to Parliament and the Council.
I cannot give you my position on the many recommendations set out in the motion for a resolution under the various headings of the charter. Personally, I consider these recommendations, addressed in the main to the Member States, quite feasible and, as I said, likely to bring very tangible improvements in the protection of fundamental rights in the Union. We know that democracy is a model that can never be attained in full, but more importantly it is a model we aim to attain. I believe the Member States must look at these recommendations in the perspective of gradually approaching our aim. We must see them not as criticisms but as suggestions on how to give better protection to fundamental rights throughout the European Union.
The Commission has also taken careful note of the recommendations addressed to it on European citizenship, especially in regard to points 122 and 123 of the report. Let me point out that the Commission has made a proposal, which was forwarded to Parliament and the Council late last week, on reviewing the texts in force on the free movement of persons, to which point 123 refers."@en1
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