Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-11-Speech-1-077"
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"en.20050411.15.1-077"2
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"Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, the oral questions presented to you by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs focus on three prior conditions to which Parliament has returned regularly since the Treaty of Amsterdam set us the objective of transforming the EU into an area of freedom, security and justice. We have indeed been convinced since l999 that such an objective can only be achieved if three conditions are fulfilled: more legitimacy, greater effectiveness and more credibility for our political action.
Firstly, more legitimacy. What this signifies for Parliament is more respect for the democratic principle according to which the European Parliament must definitely be more seriously involved in preparing European legislation and negotiating international agreements. In The Hague, the European Council decided to make the transition to codecision where illegal immigration was concerned, but – rather bizarrely – it rejected codecision when it came to legal immigration, which is the form of immigration of interest to most Europeans.
Parliament also continues simply to be consulted on criminal matters, which is the most sensitive area of relations between European citizens and institutions. The Council has still not grasped that, if this relationship is not based on very high standards and on a courageous policy for promoting fundamental rights, any initiative launched by the EU is in danger of being contested by those same Member States that put the brakes on the EU’s development. This discrepancy between public declarations and practical decisions already sees us face to face before the Court of Justice, disputing regulations in the areas of family reunification, data protection and, perhaps tomorrow, asylum procedure.
Greater effectiveness comes next, since most of the responses given by the institutions to requests in connection with the free movement of persons or with tackling organised crime or terrorism remain very vague when they are not merely theoretical declarations. That this is the case is still proved to us by the fact that we continue to proceed by trial and error when it comes not only to border control and to the development of Schengen cooperation but also to conflict prevention or the promotion of integration. The absence of clear objectives and priorities leads us to dissipate our energies as much as the lack of any obvious link with other Community policies which do, however, complement the policies associated with the area of freedom, security and justice.
Another crucial factor to be defined is that of the relationship between the European and the national institutions. It will be difficult for us to obtain more mutual trust if we are not in a position to define the tasks of each decision-making level, the expected responses and the measures to be taken in case of a failure to act. We must not forget that, in speaking of people’s freedoms or security, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Finally, we need more credibility. Last year, the European Council confronted an impressively high number of instances in which the action plan to combat terrorism was not put into effect. All it was able to do was appoint a representative of the Secretary-General, thereby adding, if need be, a new piece to a sort of institutional Meccano which is already failing to impress in terms of its transparency and, certainly, its efficiency. To date, agencies such as Europol or CEPOL still have to prove their worth and have difficulty integrating themselves into the national security systems. On many occasions, the European Parliament has invited the Council to create credible bodies, better integrated into the institutional framework of the EU, but it has never received genuinely credible responses. In certain cases, like that of the development of information bodies, the replies have even been so vague as to make one wonder if they really have been devised in a way that is equal to the questions raised.
I shall in any case listen very carefully, or rather – since obligations in connection with the French election campaign will require me to leave the Chamber in a few minutes’ time – I shall, no later than tomorrow morning, read the replies given to us in the course of this debate. I am able right now to commit myself to presenting the competent parliamentary committee with proposals designed to reopen a dialogue between our institutions that is commensurate with our expectations – those of our people, as well as those generated by the tasks that have been entrusted to us under the Treaties and that call for a clear political perspective rather than technocratic responses that cause delay."@en1
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