Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-13-Speech-2-218"
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"en.20051213.55.2-218"2
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".
Mr President, I regard what has gone on over recent weeks in relation to the retention of data as quite simply monstrous. Ever since the Commission produced its proposal, this House has been under extraordinary pressure of time. From the word ‘go’, we were given to understand that this proposal had to go through, come what may, by the end of the year; this alone meant that really credible and comprehensive work on it was scarcely feasible, and it is obvious that the intention was that there should not be any! As I see it, further evidence for this is to be found in the fact that we will not, tomorrow, be voting on the report by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, but are, in essence, supposed to be merely nodding through what the Council resolved on at the beginning of December.
Speaking as my group’s shadow rapporteur, let me say that I find it quite simply unacceptable that the two big groups should disregard the Committee’s vote and deliberately – let Mrs Klamt take note of this – go behind the rapporteur’s back and hatch schemes with the Council. The compromise that the PPE-DE and PSE groups have negotiated with the Council is rotten to the core and stinks to high heaven.
My group rejects the compromise proposal outright, and so I, together with Mrs Buitenweg of the Group of the Greens, have already submitted a minority report to the Committee and moved that the Commission proposal be rejected tomorrow. I propose to tell you why I have done this. I have done this because the introduction of mandatory and systematic storage of data, data obtained on whatever occasion and for whatever reason, knocks a hole through the wall that protects the data of innocent citizens who are not suspected of anything. In essence, the Commission proposal tends to place 460 million EU citizens under general suspicion. The plan for the storage of collected data goes hand in hand with blatant assaults on Europeans’ fundamental rights and freedoms, along with the threat of disproportionate restrictions on the privacy of communications and the protection of the private domain, the very essence of both of which is at risk. The freedom of the press, and its protection of sources and informants in particular, is jeopardised, and I doubt – let my German fellow-Members take note – that this would bear scrutiny in the light of the German constitution.
The object and purpose of this measure remain unclear to this day. Even now, no evidence has been produced to support the belief that serious crimes can indeed be more successfully cleared up with the help of a vast mass of stored communications data of the widest possible variety. Yes, of course, the law enforcement authorities have to be equipped to combat terrorism and the graver types of criminal activity, but that does not justify disregarding the rights of the individual and collecting – in a situation in which it is not absolutely necessary to do so – data and information and collating and exchanging it, to the point where, in the not-too-distant future, every detail of our citizens’ lives will be laid bare.
Is, then, this Europe of ours to become an Orwellian surveillance state? I, for one – particularly as a Member from the eastern part of Germany, will have no part in any such thing. Citizens under general suspicion, combined with the obsessive collection of data and information to which the police and secret services then had access at any time – there was a time when people, quite rightly, took to the streets in demonstrations to rid themselves of this sort of political thinking, and it is a good thing that they did!"@en1
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