Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-12-Speech-3-202"
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"en.20030212.6.3-202"2
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"Mr President, in the course of 2002 we saw a broad debate and a profusion of legislation on matters relating to what is known as the area of freedom, security and justice. For obvious reasons it was felt necessary to establish more ambitious targets in areas such as illegal immigration, border control, the European arrest warrant, asylum and police and judicial cooperation, amongst others. Something that has also made a positive contribution to these developments, and I cannot deny this, is the dynamism of Commissioner Vitorino, who is responsible for these matters within the Commission and whom I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate. We cannot forget, however, that these matters are of enormous political sensitivity. We are invading the traditional sovereign borders of the Member States, a fact that cannot be ignored or played down. Recent international events are a clear reminder that the European Union is still made up of sovereign States. It is also the rights and the obligations of their citizens, however, that are at stake here and which must be acknowledged and defined with a sense of responsibility, in an attempt to respond to the needs imposed on us all by the complex current situation.
Mr President, in the short time I have left, I shall concentrate on the new terrorist threats, which require action at European level and solidarity at international level. In fact, the way in which we approach terrorism these days is completely different to the approach pursued in the 1970s and 1980s. We know that the terrorist threat today is hard to see and is underpinned by motives other than political ones. As a rule, it acts illegitimately, I repeat, illegitimately, in the name of a given civilisation in the aim of setting this on a collision course with our own. Today’s form of terrorism is well known: it selects its targets according to the visibility of the results of its action, which incidentally makes all of us and our institutions possible targets. We also know that it is extremely mobile and that it uses, as we all do, modern means of communication. We know that its sources of funding are diverse and that this funding is often obtained under the guise of promoting respectable aims. No less importantly, we know that it certainly has access to arms of mass destruction, especially chemical and biological weapons.
Against this backdrop, we must of course provide responses that go beyond the national sphere and even the spheres of action for justice and domestic security, which naturally highlights the importance of this debate of ours. The presence of these new terrorist threats undeniably requires action at European level. Unilateral national action is no longer sufficient to ensure that our populations are protected. These new concerns do not mean, however, that we should indefinitely extend the rules of Community initiative and of qualified majority in this entire area. We believe that these developments do not necessarily mean that the Union’s procedures must all be produced or implemented in the same way. I am sure that it will be possible to take decisions on issues of Justice and Home Affairs by simplifying the structure of the pillars, without this changing the balance of the necessary cooperation between governments and national authorities in conjunction with the system of joint management developed by the European Union."@en1
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