Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-03-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20030603.2.2-038"2
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". Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking Parliament, in particular Mr Hernández Mollar, the chairman of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, for this report on such an important and sensitive issue. I welcome the fact that the draft agreements have been declassified and that the opportunity has been given to the European Parliament to examine them in parallel with the examination by national parliaments in the Member States.
I would insist that Member States be bound by the European Convention on Human Rights and its protocols. Nothing in these draft agreements should lead to decreased compliance with these international obligations.
It is also my deep conviction that the European Convention will conclude positively on the inclusion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the future constitution, thus giving it a legally binding and constitutional status.
As regards Article 10 of the draft extradition agreement, and in particular the situation of an extradition request that conflicts with a European arrest warrant, a Member State confronted with such a situation of conflicting requests shall take into account a number of criteria in order to take a decision that widely corresponds to the lists of such competing requests already provided by the framework decision creating the European arrest warrant.
The designation of the competent authority is left to the requested Member State. This can be a judicial authority unless the existing bilateral treaty between the Member State in question and the United States foresees an executive authority.
In addition, the final wording of the agreement drafted very recently at the last negotiation session has improved in the sense that it better underlines the fact that the framework decision on the European arrest warrant could be amended in the global context of further European Union integration. This might in turn lead to the adaptation of the agreement with the United States in line with the natural evolution of the legislation on the European arrest warrant.
Finally, regarding data protection provisions, the relevant provision in the draft mutual legal assistance agreement with the United States is modelled on the two most recent European texts: the European Union's Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters of 2000 and the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime.
One must recognise that these agreements under Articles 24 and 38 are negotiated by the Council. The Commission is
the negotiator of these agreements in the external arena. Therefore, in this debate the Commission participates as it is associated to the negotiating process, but the Council of Ministers has the final word.
We would like to recognise the efforts made by the Belgian, Spanish, Danish and now the Greek presidencies to launch these agreements following the decision taken by the European Council after the events of 11 September 2001. On the basis of this authorisation, and the directives for negotiations that were adopted by the Justice and Home Affairs Council, the Commission welcomes the fact that this consultation procedure should be concluded in time to allow for signature by the European Union and the United States of America during the summit at the end of this month.
Pursuant to the authorisation given by the Council to the presidency to negotiate the agreements with the United States in April last year, the Commission assisted in the negotiations from the beginning, so it is particularly well-placed to appreciate the real difficulties experienced therein.
We understood that the Commission's role was to help to reach a positive result. Like Parliament, in its draft recommendation, the Commission is of the opinion that stronger solutions would have been preferable on a number of points covered by these agreements. I had the opportunity to have a constructive discussion on a number of the concerns raised by Parliament in the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, together with the Greek Minister of Justice. The Greek minister also discussed a number of these concerns in the debate that took place in plenary last month on the EU-US agreements.
Let me stress that the United States side did not get satisfaction on a number of points of major importance to them and which were strongly opposed by the Union, such as the extradition of European Union nationals and the limitations of the political offence exception to extradition.
We now need to make an overall assessment of the result of the negotiations. One of the criteria for this assessment is the added value of a Union agreement compared with the situation that currently exists on the basis of bilateral agreements between Member States and the United States of America. This assessment has to be made taking due account of the fact that this is, as the President mentioned, the very first Union agreement in the field of Justice and Home Affairs, and it will be a historical precedent.
In addition to the incontestable advantages that the agreements on extradition and mutual legal assistance with the United States will bring in terms of concrete judicial cooperation in criminal matters and the fight against organised crime and terrorism, I would focus on the following, trying to address some of the major concerns raised by this Parliament.
Regarding protection against the death penalty, the draft extradition agreement compares with the strongest anti-death penalty clauses that can be found in existing bilateral treaties, whether an agreement with a Member State or one with a candidate country. This means that as far as all the other bilateral agreements are concerned, this anti-death penalty provision is stronger in the current European Union agreement than in the vast majority of others. In addition it allows the invoking of all grounds for refusal available pursuant to a bilateral extradition treaty between a Member State and the United States, and will open the possibility of consultation in the event that constitutional principles or final judicial decisions binding upon a requested state may impede the fulfilment of an extradition. This provision, combined with specific references in the recitals to individual rights, fair trial and an impartial tribunal, offers significant guarantees."@en1
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