Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-06-Speech-3-384"
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"en.20060906.25.3-384"2
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".
Mr President, we all know that Europe’s citizens are on the move. We have overtly encouraged this within our own borders through the principle of free movement. However, our citizens are also mobile throughout the world and they can end up in all sorts of improbable situations and scrapes that involve them dealing with civil law in the courts. Such is the nature of modern life. So far as it is feasible we want to be able to offer them some sort of certainty at these moments of personal crisis.
For more than 100 years, The Hague Conference on Private International Law has worked tirelessly and with an ever-growing number of countries across the globe to put together numerous international conventions on civil law subjects: sale of goods, testamentary dispositions, child abduction, maintenance obligations and road-traffic accidents. They have striven to provide a coherent legal framework in an increasingly mobile world.
When I was a practising lawyer, I often had recourse to Hague conventions to assist clients caught up in troubles with a cross-border dimension. Those clients had reasons to be thankful for the existence of this rather unknown organisation. Over the last years as a parliamentarian, I have had the privilege, on behalf of this House, to attend many of The Hague meetings, to get to know the people behind this apparently rather technical and distant exercise, to see the officials and national experts at their work, drafting and negotiating very complex and technical agreements to assist our citizens. It is difficult work, taking account of an ever-increasing number of legal traditions and cultural values. Whilst it may seem to be technical work, there are very big political choices underlying many of these apparently dry legal issues. This work should increasingly see the light of day and I hope that our involvement will assist that process.
Up until now, the Community has been represented by all its individual Member States and, from my limited observations, that also brings a richness and strength to the work of the conference because of the diversity of our own legal traditions and our own comparative legal experience. However, it is also clear that, given the new Community competence post-Amsterdam, there is every reason why the Community should operate as a Community within the conference. In every practical sense it already does this through joint coordination meetings and, in any event, the conference works by consensus. Therefore, I have absolutely no problem in recommending to colleagues that this House should give its assent to the accession of the Community to The Hague Conference. It is a good thing, a positive and timely development.
However, there is a caveat; it is contained at the end of the explanatory statement to my report and set out in more detail in our chairman’s motion for a resolution. In passing this competence to the Community, Parliament is in some measure possibly detracting from its own hard-won legislative powers. I say ‘possibly detracting’, because tonight we look to the Commissioner for reassurance that Parliament will continue to be fully involved in the future work when new conventions are negotiated and new or old ones ratified by the Community. We have to find new working methods that fully respect Parliament’s position as co-legislator with the Council.
Much as I have enjoyed over the last years attending Hague Conference meetings as a sort of ad hoc representative of this House, we now need something much more formal and transparent that reflects the new role of our institutions in this process.
I hinted earlier that the conventions negotiated at The Hague deserve much more attention. They deserve that attention because they not only achieve positive outcomes for our citizens but also, increasingly, involve making political choices and balancing interests. This is work that cries out for more parliamentary involvement and I know that this is something The Hague Conference would also welcome. There have been initial discussions about some kind of parliamentary forum. This is something we should pursue.
However, this should not be seen as in any way excusing the need for this House to be fully involved in the Community’s legislative process in relation to the work of the Conference. This would be by way of an additional activity that is within our powers to undertake. I hope colleagues will agree that we should be initiators in this regard, perhaps hosting a first meeting."@en1
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