Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-14-Speech-3-210"
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"en.20060614.17.3-210"2
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(
) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this issue that we are now dealing with in this plenary is one that we consider to be particularly important. Whenever the security and dignity of a citizen of the European Union is threatened, then we are all threatened. The credibility of our Union and its principles and institutions are at stake here.
Where we have to recognise, however, that positive initiatives, education and awareness are not enough to stop violence or its precursors – intolerance and incitement – then our Member States must make use of legal proceedings in order to protect their citizens. The States of the European Union have criminal law procedures that are thoroughly appropriate for dealing with the challenges of racist and intolerant patterns of behaviour.
The Austrian Presidency of the Council believes that a European framework decision on the combating of racism and xenophobia would be an important signal and an important step towards the completion of the relevant European instruments. Work on such a framework decision began in 2001, although there are still problems, due to the Member States’ historically developed criminal law systems. Work here is difficult, and until now a definite result has not been achieved.
In the light of the serious and dangerous challenge represented by racist and homophobic violence, decisive leadership is needed from those in positions of political power – especially from the Presidency of the Council. The President-in-Office of the Council, Mrs Plassnik, I myself, and other representatives of the Austrian Presidency, have been and are trying to provide this leadership. Thus on 21 March of this year, on the 40th International Day for the Elimination of Racism, Mrs Plassnik declared, among other things, that: ‘The worldwide struggle against racism is by no means won – in the EU, too, there is no cause for self-complacency.’
Earlier, on 17 March, at an event dealing with this very issue, I myself said: ‘The contribution of local and regional bodies to the protection of minorities and to measures against discrimination is particularly essential.’ I also drew attention to the situation of the Roma minority, who are unfortunately often targets of discrimination and racist violence in the European Union.
On 5 May, the national Austrian day against violence and racism, the President-in-Office of the Council commemorated the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp as well as the people from over 30 European nations who were brought by the Nazis to Mauthausen, where they were degraded, tortured and murdered. That should remind us where intolerance and racism lead - and this European Union must ensure that it never happens again.
Honourable Members, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks – and also personal thanks, since I have been working on this issue for many years – to this House, for having put such an important item on the agenda; and I would like to assure you that the Council greatly appreciates your dedication in this matter and that it will be working with you hand in hand.
The Union – and this was made very clear in this morning’s debate – is based on the principles of freedom, democracy, respect for human rights and basic freedoms and constitutionality. This is anchored in the founding treaties, and since then it has been restated in numerous institutional agreements and in numerous legal acts. We must therefore consider acts of racist and homophobic violence as direct provocations, and we must take decisive steps against them.
We must not allow people who are citizens within our own Union to feel like outsiders, and neither can we allow it, if people from other parts of the world who come here have experiences that contradict our values completely.
Since the Treaty of Amsterdam entered into force, the Union has – with directives on equal treatment laid down in the year 2000 – created a set of instruments to prevent or rather to combat discrimination across the Union, whether on account of ethnic background, religion, or of sexual orientation, among others.
On the basis of these two directives, the Community Action Programme to combat discrimination 2001-2006 was set up. In doing this, the European Union makes it very clear that in dealing with this matter it will not limit itself to passing legal statutes, but will take sweeping measures in order to implement anti-discrimination policies.
You know these measures, I do not need to go into detail here. I would, though, especially like to emphasise the great significance that we all attach to the activity of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia in this context. For those in positions of political power, its findings provide an important basis for decisions.
Allow me to continue here a point that I already made this morning. We believe that it would be a fair acknowledgment of these efforts towards equality and against discrimination and racism, if we were to create a fundamental rights agency, a separate agency that tackled these issues. The concern of this agency would be to ensure that we, in the Member States, in the institutions and in official bodies, observe the rules that we have in the European Union, rules that have become part of the
. This is not about carrying out general human rights investigations and setting ourselves up in competition with other institutions, in particular the Council of Europe. It is, rather, about the fact that we, as a Union, need an institution with the job of implementing measures that were decided here.
I repeat what I already said this morning, namely that in my opinion this planned human rights agency would fulfil this task. Civil society – our fellow citizens – wants and needs this agency.
We know that in the field of combating forms of intolerance, below the level of the Union, there are a great number of worthy national initiatives, both public and citizens’ initiatives. These initiatives are striving to promote awareness, to bring different groups together in order to remove prejudices or, in the case of young people, using educational means to prevent prejudices from ever arising, which I regard as particularly important. They deserve our full support."@en1
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