Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-037"
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"en.20020206.3.3-037"2
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"Mr President, the issue of the European arrest warrant is really quite bizarre, not only because important issues remain vague, but also because Parliament lacks the courage to exact what it agrees to in substance. First of all, I should like to give you a random example of this lack of clarity. The Council has rightly pared down the Commission proposal, as a result of which a Member State can refuse to extradite someone if that person has not done anything wrong according to that country. I agree with this. Accordingly, a Dutch doctor who carries out an abortion on an Irish girl in the Netherlands does not face extradition to Ireland. However, could this doctor ever go on holiday to Ireland, or any other EU country, if Ireland requests extradition on the grounds of manslaughter? This remains unclear, and a lack of clarity in criminal law leads to the sense of justice being eroded.
I should now like to turn to the issue of parliamentary courage. Mr Watson, ever since the Di Lello report, this Parliament has been of the opinion ‘that the Member States have to agree on common minimum standards for certain aspects of procedural law in order to guarantee a common level of protection of the constitutional right across the EU’. Since the European arrest warrant has demonstrated the need to protect our citizens across the European Union, and we also have the tool to enforce this protection, then we must also have the courage to use it. And you need not be frightened. If the Council is just as dynamic and decisive in guaranteeing citizens’ rights as it is in taking repressive measures, the European arrest warrant will not run into any delays. Certainly not now the Commission has presented a first version of the minimum standards, by means of which it has demonstrated that these are both necessary and possible.
With regard to the definition of terrorism, my group adheres to a number of guarantees included in the recitals and the Council Declarations of 6 December, including the guarantee that nothing in this framework decision ‘can be interpreted in such a way that people who exercise their constitutional right to free expression of opinion can be charged on terrorist grounds, even if they break the law in the process.’ But all good intentions to adopt this text have been seriously hampered by the fact that these guarantees are not included in the Council Decisions of 27 December. The essence of the definition in this text is identical, but the guarantees have disappeared. They are not even referred to. Our amendment to the resolution aims to plug this loophole and, since only time will tell whether I am unnecessarily distrustful or justifiably cautious, I would ask the other groups to give my group this assurance."@en1
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