Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-30-Speech-1-037"
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"en.20030630.6.1-037"2
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"Mr President, there are some points I would like to underline in supporting what Mr Lehne said at the beginning of this debate. First, and most importantly, we are dealing with a matter of great public concern, but a matter that has been in the public domain for a long time. We are dealing with a course of events which Mr Cohn-Bendit has not merely not denied but has also publicly avowed. We are dealing with a course of events in respect of which Mr Cohn-Bendit was specifically praised by the trial court involved in the trial of Mr Klein some years ago, where the court drew attention to the courage and public spirit of the people who had assisted in getting that particular accused person to come out of hiding and give himself up to the public authorities. So this is not a case of somebody seeking surreptitiously to hide from accusations or from public justice, but of somebody who has openly avowed his actions.
Mr Lehne was absolutely right to say that there can be no question of the public prosecutors in Frankfurt being themselves in any way deviously motivated. They have a public duty to take up a complaint that has been laid before them on ostensibly justifiable grounds.
However, it does not follow that those who laid the accusation before the public prosecutors, thereby triggering that public duty, were themselves wholly lacking in any deviousness of motive. When account is taken of two aspects of the public interest here today – firstly, that there ought not to be unreasonable protection of MEPs or anybody else from public prosecution where circumstances warrant it and, secondly and importantly, that electoral debate and discussion should be able to go forward without unreasonable impediment or harassment of leading figures in it – the balance of the public interest in this case seems to be absolutely clear: the public prosecutors are doing their duty and we should do ours. In this case, that duty points clearly in the direction indicated by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market to decline waiving the immunity."@en1
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