Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-12-Speech-1-077"
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"en.20011112.7.1-077"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, despite the importance of the initiatives before us, the European Parliament is, on this matter, only being consulted. That means that, as often happens in these cases, the decision we take with our vote will not be taken into any account by the Council. In spite of this, or rather, especially because of this, I want to focus on the need for urgent reform of Europol, in order to allow democratic and judicial control.
Parliament has been calling for this for at least five years, since the presentation of the Nassauer report in 1996. The Nassauer report sent a strong political signal to the Council. It called upon the Member States not to ratify the Europol Convention until it had been placed under the control of the Court of Justice, that is, until the Court of Justice had been given the necessary decision-making authority over its interpretation and proper implementation. Mr Nassauer’s report was exemplary in its handling of the problems encountered by Europol and the Convention, which remain the same today. Resolution of these problems does not depend on the political groups, the rapporteur or Mr Nassauer: the judicial and democratic control of Europol is an institutional matter.
The refusal to bind up this wound inflicted on European democracy, if we can talk about the system regulating the Union’s institutions today in these terms, implies that it would be impossible to make any tangible progress in creating an area which is genuinely an area of security, of justice and of freedom but which we feel must be first and foremost an area of democracy. Since the setting-up of Europol, the European Parliament has pointed out the need to supervise it. The plan to increase Europol’s powers to deal with the critical situation with regard to terrorism, the scandal involving a Europol senior official and the reluctance of the national police forces to transmit their data to Europol, as well as the creation of Parlopol – a group of national and European Members of Parliament upholding the importance of increasing democratic control over Europol and its decisions within the area of justice, freedom and security – have already led the Council to reflect at least on the need to introduce some reforms.
Most importantly, the Council requested that the Commission draw up a communication on the democratic control of Europol by the end of the year. We know the opinion of Commissioner Vitorino, who has stated many times that he considers it appropriate to set up a committee composed of members of the national and European parliaments, but we hope to hear now that the timetable for this reform will be speeded up. We feel that, in a democratic framework, Europol should be subject to financial, budgetary and judicial control as well as democratic control. Financial and budgetary control are currently impossible in that Europol is funded by the national States and not by the Community budget; thus Parliament and the Commission have no power of budgetary or financial control and cannot therefore either criticise or direct the activities of that body.
Judicial control has also been denied. Indeed, the Court of Justice has been denied full powers of judicial control. We should also note that Europol officials benefit from immunity that is so wide-ranging that it is like a guarantee of impunity, protecting them with regard to the judicial control which can be exercised at national level.
Then there is the problem of the gradual increase in the mandate and powers of Europol. Although Europol initially dealt with drug-related crime, the act under consideration widens the powers of Europol to what is, in essence, all types of crime. To enable the European Parliament to express its concerns and requests to the Council and the Commission at a time when they are preparing to take decisions enlarging Europol’s powers and jurisdiction, we feel that, in addition to the amendments on the two Acts proposed by Belgium and Sweden, other amendments are necessary to resolve this issue. In our opinion, the amendments tabled may perform the function of clarifying and improving the initiatives under consideration and send the Council and the Member States a clear political message criticising the current situation and proposing several fundamental guidelines for reform.
Lastly, the combination of the factors I have mentioned and the lack of codecision powers conferred on the European Parliament with regard to justice and home affairs must prompt all those who hold dear the principles of democracy and freedom to reject the two initiatives under consideration, for I feel this would make the Council and the Member States more aware of the urgent need to reform Europol."@en1
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