Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-28-Speech-3-110"
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"en.20011128.5.3-110"2
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"Madam President, since 11 September, there have been many opportunities to think about and debate upon the consequences of the events of that fateful day and today is no exception.
Without a doubt, the attacks in New York have made us realise that nobody can feel entirely safe from terrorism. When a man and a woman are murdered in Beasaín, as happened last week, for example, each and every one of us is affected, and it is not reasonable to ask the elected representatives of a democracy, Mr Watson, to have to debate under the threat of death.
These events have also reminded us that we were a long way behind in meeting the commitments that the Heads of State and Government had given in Tampere in order to develop the third pillar of the European Union.
The report that we approved by a large majority in committee contains contributions which, in my opinion, are very valid, to the otherwise excellent Commission proposal. For example, to define street violence as clearly being one form of terrorist expression, or to incorporate a reference to victims and their families and to offer political support and legal protection with the aim of identifying terrorism and bringing terrorists and their supporters to justice through the courts. This is precisely the purpose of the amendment we tabled in plenary and should be interpreted in this way. I hope that these and other contributions will be added to the text that the Council is debating, and, in particular, this latter amendment, which I hope the rapporteur will also vote for and will be taken into consideration when the European list of terrorist organisations that Parliament requested is drawn up.
The Ministers for Justice and Home Affairs should fulfil their duty on the 6 and 7 December, and if they do not do so, the Presidency will have to honour its commitment to Parliament to take this issue at Laeken, and if any Member State there is tempted to block a proposal that has the widespread support of our citizens, it seems appropriate to me that closer cooperation should be implemented according to provisions of Article 40 of the Treaty.
The Council’s requests do not date from 11 September. In September 2000, one year ago, the vast majority of MEPs signed a written declaration requesting the methods that today have been submitted for our consideration. These are the same methods that we are asking the Commission for in the own-initiative report on the role of the European Union in the fight against terrorism that we approved, also by a very large majority, on 5 September. Therefore, it needs to be made very clear that none of these measures makes the slightest reduction in the civil liberties of European citizens. The opposite is the case, we are giving the judicial system instruments to enable it to better protect everyone’s freedom because, faced with the free movement of crime, we must open the doors to the free movement of justice."@en1
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