Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-272"
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"en.20031022.11.3-272"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Vitorino, ladies and gentlemen, the subject of the report which I am about to present is the Commission proposal for a Council directive on compensation to crime victims. This initiative follows on from the Green Paper on compensation to crime victims with which, in September 2001, the Commission began to promote the debate on this issue and which, a year ago, was the subject of a report, which I had the honour of drafting, and also a Parliament resolution.
On several occasions during debates in this House on the issue of justice and combating crime, a judicial system emerged at European level that centres almost exclusively – and I would say quite rightly – on penalties, punishment and control. Only to a lesser extent
does this system deal with the rehabilitation and social reintegration of the defendants and, more generally, with a crime prevention policy. At the bottom of this list are, I am sorry to say, the victims of crime: innocent citizens who, despite having suffered an injury, at times serious, are, all too often, denied adequate protection and compensation. Thus, we need to put the protection of victims at the centre of the debate on justice.
The most urgent problem to solve is the existence of major disparities between the national compensation schemes, enormous differences as regards the level of compensation and related procedures in each individual Member State. Such a situation cannot be considered compatible with the principles underlying the creation of a single area of freedom, security and justice.
There has been a great deal of progress during the course of the year. The European Union has selected possible objectives to pursue, criticised the difficulties associated with the various legal systems of the Member States, identified the different kinds of needs of crime victims and established the minimum Community measures to be enforced.
The most eagerly-awaited and most important step forward is, however, the desire now to adopt a binding legislative strategy, at Community level, to actively realise the Tampere policy objectives. Thanks to this directive, it will be possible to take an initial step towards harmonisation of the European criminal law systems as regards the treatment of crime victims, guaranteeing them, with all due respect for the principle of subsidiarity, sufficient attention, recognition of the necessary support and reparation for the harm inflicted, including when the person who committed the crime has not been identified, has disappeared or is unable to pay. Identifying common categories to define crime victims, compensation beneficiaries when the victim has died and the common procedures and formalities for payment therefore constitute the minimum legal base that the European Union is called upon to have to provide, so that it is no longer the case that the amount of compensation or the possibility of receiving it depends on the place of residence or on the place where the crime was committed. To this end, although I generally agree with everything that the Commission proposed, we added a more explicit description of the type of damage for which compensation is to be provided and the time frames laid down for compensation than is contained in the original text.
We specified a minimum threshold for exclusion from compensation; we proposed, in order to avoid linguistic difficulties, to introduce harmonised forms and translations, where appropriate, into the language that the victim can understand. The priority objective is to guarantee the fundamental principle of non-discrimination for all citizens and legal residents in the Union and the desire to limit, as far as possible, the effects and suffering of victims of unjust damage, who are victims a second time when they are denied support by inadequate, or sometimes non-existent compensation systems
I will conclude Mr President by thanking my fellow Members who contributed to the good outcome of the work."@en1
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