Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-03-Speech-3-183"
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"en.20030903.8.3-183"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I wish to welcome this timely debate and congratulate the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs and the rapporteur, Mr Sylla, on the report we are today discussing, which has demonstrated the ongoing nature of the efforts being made by Parliament on protecting fundamental rights in the European Union.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union will have a Constitution. Central to this Constitution, according to the conclusions of the Convention on the Future of Europe, will be the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which was adopted by the preceding Convention and which received the political endorsement of the three institutions at the Nice European Council. This means that a constitutional legal system will be based on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Union. The Commission realises the importance, however, of implementing Article 7 of the Treaty of Nice before the Charter can take full effect. To this end, I wish to confirm that at some point in September, the Commission will approve and submit to Parliament and Council a communication on the implementing conditions of Article 7 of the Treaty of Nice in the field of the protection of fundamental rights.
I shall conclude, therefore, by saying that, through this debate and through these initiatives, the Commission, like Parliament, is making a decisive contribution to a sea-change in the Union’s legal and political framework. One of the components of this transformation is that of fundamental rights, which must not only be respected but whose entire development must be safeguarded. We will then be able to construct a genuine fundamental rights policy in the Union, implement it ourselves and thereby set an example to the entire world.
There is one particularly significant aspect to this report: this is the first Parliamentary report drawn up on the basis of the annual report on the situation of fundamental rights in the Union and in the Member States drafted by the network of independent experts set up by the Commission at the specific request of the European Parliament. The network’s report expresses the points of view of independent experts, not that of the Commission, and examines the specific situation of the protection of fundamental rights, in light of changes in national legislation and national practices and of developments in the case law of the Luxembourg and Strasbourg Courts. I therefore welcome the fact that the network’s report has been useful to your work. I am also aware that it is certainly possible to improve it in future and to make it more operational, as proposed in item 4 of Mr Sylla’s report.
In line with the recommendations that Parliament will in all likelihood approve, the Commission has already held discussions with the coordinator of the network of experts in the aim of adapting the network’s work to the concerns and priorities expressed by Parliament. I can also state that, in future, the honourable Members of this House will also have access to the national reports drawn up by each expert in the network and that meetings between the network and the future EP rapporteur will be held more frequently. Similarly, as early as October, the Commission will be holding a meeting with representatives of non-governmental organisations to ensure that the information included in the report is as complete and as reliable as possible.
We are clearly at an extremely important juncture for the protection of fundamental rights in the European Union. Firstly, because the Union will be enlarging to encompass the entire European family and, secondly, because the Union is laying down its constitutional rules following the work of the Convention on the Future of Europe and in the context of the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference. The Union is also working on an area of freedom, security and justice which, it is hoped, will contribute to defining its true identity as a political union that respects the fundamental values of the democratic rule of law.
With regard to the cases raised by Mr Sylla’s report and to some of the problems in the field of fundamental rights in the European Union, I wish to inform the House that the Commission has already adopted, or is in the process of adopting in relation to some of the issues, measures that will provide solutions. In October 2002, the Commission presented a proposal for a directive on compensating victims of crime in general, which specifically covers victims of terrorism.
With regard to freedom of movement and of residence, which is a crucial element of the European project, on 15 April of this year, the Commission adopted an amended proposal for a directive rethinking freedom of movement. We are also currently working closely with the Italian Presidency to ensure that Council and Parliament reach a common position that will enable a second reading to be held quickly so that this legislative process can be concluded before the European Parliament elections in June 2004.
Similarly, the Commission is closely monitoring the situation of the Roma minority in the context of enlargement, both from the point of view of countries’ compliance with the political criteria for joining the European Union, and of their receiving funding through the PHARE programme. We also intend to launch a study to assess the form that the Commission’s programmes should take in order to ensure that they are coherent and effective.
With regard to preventive strategies to deal with the consequences of mass redundancies, the Union has developed a universal policy for addressing company restructuring. Consequently, before any restructuring takes place, employees must be informed and consulted in order to eliminate or mitigate the social impact of such decisions.
The issue of reconciling family and working lives forms an integral part of the aims of the Community framework strategy for gender equality for the period 2001-2005. With regard to the draft proposal for a framework decision on the procedural safeguards given to suspects and defendants in criminal proceedings in the European Union, which has arisen as a result of the Green Paper published by the Commission on 19 February, the drafting of this proposal is now under way and the text will be available at the end of November, once it has been adopted by the Commission."@en1
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