Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-04-Speech-4-074"
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"en.20011004.3.4-074"2
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".
Naturally, I agree without reservation with the total condemnation of terrorism which constitutes the stated motive for this regulation. However, both the decision process and content of the regulation constitute an insult to that very democracy and rule of law whose protection is claimed to be the aim of the proposal.
The European Parliament has been forced into rushed action without any reports, debate or access to the text of the legislation in many languages, including Swedish. No positive reason has been given to explain why normal forms of democratic decision-making have to be bypassed. As it is the Member States which in the final analysis will implement the proposed freezing of suspected terrorists’ financial assets and as this must in any case be carried out through measures within each Member State, there is nothing to suggest that an EU regulation is required or that it will speed up the implementation of necessary measures.
At the same time, the regulation is a legal rush job and a mockery of all the grand statements to the effect that the fight against terrorism should not be perceived as a war against Islam or the Arab world.
The regulation contains no definition of terrorism, terrorists or terror organisations whatsoever. Instead of the legislating body operating in the normal legal way by formulating a general definition of the crime and leaving it to the judicial system to trace, arrest, prosecute and judge those whose actions correspond to the definition of the crime confirmed by law, the legislating body, i.e. the Commission as proposer, the Council as decision-maker and the European Parliament as the body considering the proposal, has pre-empted the application of the law and circumvented the need for a definition of the crime by instead directly announcing 27 ‘guilty’ organisations and people.
The origin of this list cannot be traced to any legal procedure whatsoever, but comes from the CIA. The list contains a number of names with no more specific information – names which probably belong to several people. In addition, all the names on the list are easily identifiable as Arabic/Muslim.
The result has been a diversion which is not needed in order for necessary measures to be taken in EU countries against terrorists’ financial assets, which breaches fundamental legal principles and which must also be perceived as a one-sided political attack on the Muslim/Arab world.
Through its decision to adopt a number of amendments, the European Parliament has pointed to possible ways of partly, but far from entirely, reducing the deficiencies to which attention has been called. I believe it would have been more just of the European Parliament in this situation to have shown its dissatisfaction unambiguously by recommending the complete rejection of the Commission’s proposal. In this way, the Commission would have been able to return with a new proposal which would have genuinely increased the chances of fighting terrorism, would have been based on legal principles and would have ruled out any suspicion that the proposal is one-sidedly directed against the Arabic/Muslim world.
Against this background, I, like a number of my colleagues in the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, voted against the proposal in the final vote."@en1
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