Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-16-Speech-3-106"
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"en.20020116.6.3-106"2
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".
Thank you very much, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. I thank you for all of the speeches you have made during this sitting, which I have listened to with the greatest interest. I wish to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that, of course, I share many of the aspirations that you have expressed here today. I also share many of your concerns but nor should it come as a surprise to anybody that I do not fully agree with some of what I have heard. I must of course, say, however, that, in general terms, I have the feeling that the basic elements of the issues, the objectives and the hopes that we, the various institutions and Europe’s citizens in general share are or can, quite reasonably, be promoted for the future, when it comes to putting our ideas and our plans into practice.
Various speakers, in particular Mr Poettering, have called for us to be resolute in the fight against terrorism. They are right. We must ask ourselves if in general terms, the European Union is capable at this historic juncture of dealing with the task in hand. I would say that it is reasonably capable, that the European arrest and surrender warrant – supported, of course, by all Fifteen Member States of the Union – the fight against the funding of terrorist organisations and the definition of a list of groups of organisations and persons that support terrorism are extraordinary steps. It is my fervent hope that in its sitting of 5 February, the European Parliament will also take a definitive step in this direction.
How can this be done? This must be done on the basis of the guarantees provided by the Rule of Law. You are quite right, ladies and gentlemen, in saying that the Rule of Law and our freedoms must be fully guaranteed. It is also true, and it should not be forgotten at this time that this is exactly what safeguards democracies and that this is exactly what these people wish to destroy and what those who dedicate themselves to carrying out or supporting terrorism wish to put an end to.
Maintaining democracy through the Rule of Law is precisely, of course, our best guarantee. There cannot be – and indeed there are none – half-way houses in the fight against terrorism, because there are no half-way houses between life and death, between legality and lawlessness, between respect for the law and complicity with terrorism. What there must be is a clear defence, when necessary, from an international point of view, by means of an international coalition, and, when necessary, with the domestic commitment or with the international cooperation of all, to ensure that our freedoms and our Rule of law triumph. And in order to achieve this, we have to work, from an operational perspective, on issues of security, intelligence, cooperation between police forces, joint investigation teams and also on the common judicial issues that are a crucial part of the process of European integration.
Furthermore, if we are coherent and consider terrorism to be one of the greatest threats currently facing our civilisation, we will have to include terrorism as an objective in the definition of the European Union’s security and defence policy. I think that this is a very important aspect and warrants very special treatment, at least in two chapters of relations that are highly relevant to the European Union: the first concerns the United States, with whom we also have discuss legal and criminal matters, whilst at the same time, of course, respecting our extradition system and maintaining our position of clear opposition to the death penalty, or of support for the jurisdiction of the courts and for all the sentences that can be handed down to an individual. But we have to discuss such matters.
We also have to discuss matters in order to reach conclusions on some of your concerns about the importance of cooperation with Russia in the fight against terrorism.
I should like, first of all, to emphasise the importance of institutional dialogue and, within institutional dialogue, once again emphasise my commitment. We will have the opportunity to speak about this European impetus and also about the work of the Spanish Presidency, both in March, following the Barcelona European Council, and in June, following the Seville European Council. This is not, of course, to undermine the importance of the appearances by various members of the Spanish government at the various parliamentary bodies of this institution.
I must tell you that, as holder of the Presidency, I see no problem in establishing what some of you have requested: the creation of a working group for interinstitutional dialogue that encompasses the Council, Parliament and the Commission and which will enable us to see clearly how best our work can be carried out. I do not think that the Commission has any problem with this either. Therefore, from this point of view, I am aware of, and agree with some of your concerns, such as the processing of documents concerning the second and third pillars, which must be resolved with all the guarantees required by the circumstances, the facts themselves and by the sensitivity of the matter, as is done in many national parliaments, with guarantees of security and of confidentiality. We can clearly make progress on many of these issues and, therefore, the Presidency will not raise any opposition to the creation of this interinstitutional working group.
I should like to focus my speech, if I may, on the Presidency’s objectives and work programme and on no other matter. Ladies and gentlemen, we have before us an extremely important opportunity for the European Union, at an historic juncture, which is of great significance. In my opinion, we have before us an opportunity of which we must not fail to take advantage. This opportunity is evident in various situations. The entire world situation has changed following 11 September and in a tragic fashion. The priority in the world today is security and the fight against terrorism. The change that has taken place since 11 September is causing fundamental strategic changes in the world that will define the world of tomorrow, on which the European institutions must reflect, maintain dialogue and on which they must adopt a position for the future. The European Union as such, through its various institutions, cannot remain on the sidelines of the important debate and participation in the profound strategic changes that the world will be seeing.
Secondly, this is a very important opportunity from the economic point of view. I say this for various reasons. Firstly, because for the first time we have the euro, our single currency, which is a guarantee of stability and which has been a great success. Secondly, because for structural reasons, to which I shall refer later, our economies need to continue putting their faith in major reforms. Thirdly, because we are going through a period of economic slowdown and unless we can take advantage of the introduction of the euro, providing impetus for economic reforms, we will be wasting an opportunity to help our economies to recover, which is, of course, extremely important.
The third aspect that must be emphasised is that we are close to concluding a process which has, of course, a huge scope, that we might call enlargement, expansion or whatever we want; but which is, ultimately, the great political process of European unification. This is the objective that would, in itself, of course, fulfil the ambitions of a political generation that is able to look back on European history and which is concerned about planning and organising our future in a reasonable way.
Lastly, we are aware that we must undertake a reform of the institutions, and we have, for this purpose, proposed the Convention and an Intergovernmental Conference.
All of these ambitions provide us with a crucial opportunity. I wish to convey to the European Parliament the commitment of the Spanish Presidency to share ambitions and, at the same time, to work coherently to achieve our objectives more effectively. This is why we have set out various priorities, on which, in response to your speeches, I should like to briefly comment.
First of all, with regard to the fight against terrorism, this is no longer a problem affecting only some people, but one that affects all of us, a problem to which some could show greater commitment, but it is quite clearly the responsibility of everyone. Of course, I appreciate, as I have said, the work and the efforts that the European Parliament has devoted to this matter. Of course, we have to consider the fight against terrorism not only in itself but also in relation to the creation of the area of freedom, security and justice, and to the Tampere commitments that are part of this more integrated Europe that we wish to build for the future."@en1
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