Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-19-Speech-3-022"
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"en.20010919.6.3-022"2
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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission is actively preparing for the European Council meeting to be held next Friday, an important part of which is tomorrow’s European Union troika meeting in the United States. This is why my colleague Chris Patten, who hoped to give a speech on external relations with particular emphasis on the fight against terrorism, could not attend this debate.
The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution, which shows the determination of representatives of European citizens to conduct a fierce and effective battle against terrorism.
The Commission is proposing a two-fold response:
First of all, we are proposing a common definition of acts of terrorism and to set across the Member States levels of penalties that reflect the seriousness of these acts. Terrorists take advantage of any differences in legal treatment in the Member States, particularly where the offence is not referred to in one of the State’s national legislation. We must admit that the situation is very different from one Member State to another. Most Member States have no specific regulations on terrorism and terrorist acts are punished as common offences. On the other hand, six Member States have specific laws or legal instruments concerning terrorism where the words ‘terrorism’ or ‘terrorist’ are expressly mentioned. The Commission’s proposal for a framework decision on terrorism aims to introduce approximation in this area and it provides a list of offences from murder to other actions that can be equally devastating, albeit more insidious, and which are described as terrorist acts if intentionally committed by individuals or by groups against one or more countries, their institutions or people, with the aim of intimidating them and seriously altering or destroying the political, economic or social structures of a country or to destroy them. It is proposed that such acts incur prison sentences ranging from a minimum of 2 years to 20 years of prison depending on the severity of the offence.
Secondly, the Commission is presenting a proposal of a horizontal nature, a fairly ambitious proposal, I must admit, which is to replace the traditional extradition procedures by a system of surrendering persons to judicial authorities on the basis of a European arrest warrant. This proposal, which also supplements the proposal on terrorism although its scope is wider, is based on the principle of mutual recognition of judgments, which the Tampere European Council hoped would become the cornerstone of European judicial cooperation. The underlying idea is that where the judicial authority of one Member State requests the surrender of a person, either for final sentencing or because this person is undergoing criminal proceedings, the decision must be recognised and executed throughout the European Union in order to simplify and accelerate procedures as far as possible. A time limit of three months is proposed and the reasons for refusing extradition are to be restricted to a limited number. In particular, the principle of double criminal liability and the exception in favour of nationals are to be abolished. The most important criterion in the European Union is not that of nationality but that of a person’s place of residence. The proposal thus seeks to facilitate, wherever possible, the execution of the sentence in the country of arrest, if that is where the person is most likely to be successfully reintegrated into society.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, tomorrow I shall have the opportunity to present these proposals to the ministers at the extraordinary Council meeting called by the Belgian Presidency to discuss the European Union’s contribution to the fight against the threat of terrorism.
The benefit of this meeting is that it provides us with the opportunity to ask the ministers questions of principle at a political level and to try to resolve them. This concerns our legislative proposals as well as a whole raft of measures that should be taken in order to step up our action at an operational level and to improve and make more effective our collaboration with our partners.
As you know, the Commission does not have any experience at an operational level, but it believes that the European Union should take a number of measures internally, including to ensure that Europol becomes an operational instrument in the fight against the various forms of crime, one of which is terrorism. For this to be done, we must implement the provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam on Europol, which provide for its participation in joint enquiry teams and the possibility of inviting Member States to launch investigations, which also requires a major review of the content of the Europol convention, including questions of judicial control and democratic control. We need strong commitment from the Member States straight away in order to establish genuine and effective cooperation between their intelligence services and to demonstrate that they share mutual trust. This is also necessary in order to bring about a significant improvement in the conditions in which Member States’ police and intelligence services provide Europol with the information needed to carry out their work, the most important part of which, in my opinion, is the prevention of terrorist acts.
Furthermore, it is important for the Union to strengthen international cooperation and this will involve taking all the necessary measures regarding judicial assistance, extradition, police and judicial cooperation in order to improve our ability to pre-empt and fight international terrorism.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, these are some ideas formulated by the Commission and which were put to the European Parliament and the European Council. At this difficult time when the citizens of our Member States are, I am sure, contemplating an uncertain and insecure future, I believe that the best political message we can give them is that this gives us a unique opportunity to show that the European project really does have an added value and that is to guarantee them a future of freedom, security and justice.
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On behalf of the Commission, I would like to stress that we support the principle that the Union must make more effort to give a consistent message where the fight against terrorism is concerned and that we need a European agenda to acknowledge the key role that must be assigned to the United Nations Organisation in the fight against global terrorism.
That is why we welcome the initiative by the Belgian Presidency to schedule an extraordinary and informal meeting of the European Council for next Friday and we are pleased to take part in today’s debate in the European Parliament. We must show the American people and the American authorities that they have the solidarity of the whole European Union. But in order for the Union to influence the guidelines on the fight against terrorism, we must give a consistent message.
Terrorism is not a recent phenomenon. The threats are new, however, and the tools used by the terrorists are new and more sophisticated.
The tragic events in the United States of America sadly demonstrate the timeliness of the two proposals that were today approved by the Commission, which are closely related and which are also in response to a request by the European Parliament that was approved at the September plenary session in Strasbourg.
I would like to clarify that our proposals are not a response to the events that occurred in the United States of America. The proposals are primarily a response to the fact that, even in our Member States, we have problems regarding terrorism that we must resolve.
The Commission has been working on these proposals for more than a year, working closely with the European Parliament, and we would like to stress that these proposals will help Europe to co-operate in a much more effective manner in the fight against terrorism, and therefore to collaborate in the fight at international level.
Terrorism constitutes one of the greatest threats to democracy, to the free exercise of human rights and free economic and social development. In recent years, we have witnessed an increase in terrorist activities both within the European Union’s borders and worldwide. This increase in the power of terrorism is characterised by a profound change in the nature of terrorist attacks. The actual or potential effects of armed attacks are increasingly devastating and fatal. The increased dependence of our society on technological evolutions is giving rise to new forms of terrorism. Increasingly, terrorism stems from the activities of networks operating at international level, which have very close links with other types of organised crime based in several countries, exploiting the legal loopholes arising from the geographical limits of investigations and sometimes enjoying extensive logistical and financial support.
Today more than any other time, therefore, we need measures to fight against this scourge. The Treaty on European Union expressly lays down that the creation of an area of freedom, security and justice shall include progressively adopting measures establishing rules relating to the constituent elements of criminal acts and to penalties in the field of terrorism."@en1
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