Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-23-Speech-1-047"
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"en.20020923.4.1-047"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish first of all to congratulate the rapporteur, Mrs Evelyne Gebhardt, on her report and express my agreement with the principle that judicial cooperation at European level can work more effectively if the main practitioners concerned, in other words judges and magistrates, are given ongoing training.
The need for this was acknowledged and reaffirmed by the Heads of State or Government at the Laeken European Council, who gave a new boost to the project of creating a training network. In the debate following up the initiative of the French Government, the Commission raised a series of questions of a legal and technical nature about the creation of a judicial training network.
The Commission’s concerns were specifically the following: first, the independence of magistrates, which must be safeguarded. Rather than imposing rigid training schemes, judges and magistrates should be given the necessary means to design and undertake this training in a flexible way. Secondly, account must be taken of already existing structures and available awareness-raising instruments, such as the European judicial network and the European civil and commercial network, must be fully exploited. Lastly, consideration must be given to the broad problem of the division of judicial cooperation issues between the first and the third pillar of the Treaty, which, in our view, requires the adoption of two identical acts, a problem which is aggravated by specific features of the opt-out protocols pertaining to Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
By supporting this initiative, the European Parliament has sought to respond to these questions, specifically this last issue of the dual legal basis. The Commission fully acknowledges the rapporteur’s efforts but does not subscribe to the ‘bridge’
formula laid down in Article 42 of the EU Treaty, which we consider to be disproportionate and somewhat unrealistic.
We share the idea that the division of judicial issues between two pillars creates difficulties. We take the view, however, that the most effective way of overcoming these difficulties would be to abolish the pillar structure in the Convention on the Future of Europe. In the working paper that the Commission presented on the “European Judicial Training Network” we advocated three possible options: one is to create a training network by means of a Council act, another is to create a Community agency for this purpose and the third option is to keep the existing network operational and at the same time increase the support given to it by the Union. The Coreper of 27 June of this year reached broad agreement in principle on the third option, emphasising the importance that it attaches to the actions of the existing network and to strengthening its activities. The Commission considers that, at the current juncture, this is the formula that best matches needs and which is most likely to achieve positive results. The network has, in fact, already started to work along these lines.
The Council has adopted the Framework Programme on Police and Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters; the AGIS programme based on the Community framework model of activities designed to facilitate judicial cooperation in civil matters. The Commission is of the view, therefore, that we already have programmes that are able to support activities to develop judicial training in Europe, in both the civil and criminal fields, which is a particularly important objective in light of the impending enlargement."@en1
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