Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-31-Speech-3-209"
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"en.20070131.23.3-209"2
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".
Mr President, in opening this discussion I would like us to imagine ourselves as one of those people we represent, perhaps off on holiday to another European country or a young person off to study somewhere else, or somebody off to a business meeting in another European capital, or even to work on a building site. All of these are simple everyday scenarios that sadly contain the potential for mishaps, for accidents involving personal injury or even death in another country.
Let me also give you some figures by way of example: in 2004 alone in Germany, just one of our 27 Member States, there were 50 000 road traffic accidents involving personal injury and a foreign national from another European country. In the UK last year, one firm of lawyers alone reported opening some 6000 files on cross-border personal injury accidents in Europe. Well, you might say, let the lawyers get on with it. But the lawyers have come to us with a problem. All legal actions are subject to a period of time within which they have to be commenced, a so-called limitation period. All good lawyers are training in their national system to observe and watch these time limits very carefully. Otherwise the whole claim is dead, finished, struck out. It is one of the nightmares of every young lawyer to miss a limitation period deadline. Of course, they all know their own, but can they be expected to know the intricacies of 27 national systems? And there are intricacies, sometimes involving differing definitions of what is a civil or criminal claim. More importantly, the time limit itself varies tremendously, between one and thirty years across the European Union.
It is bad enough to be an accident victim in another Member State. But then to fall a secondary victim to a technical difficulty over limitation periods which then stop any claim being made is, as we say in English, really a case of adding insult to injury. This is a real, practical and growing problem as we encourage free movement of persons. I hope that the very limited numbers I have been able to quote give an idea of the problem which in reality must be multiplied many times across the Member States of the Union.
As I have stated above, legal practitioners, insurers and victims alike have come to us with this problem asking that we approach you, Commissioner, to look at a range of possibilities. We know the issue is sensitive. It concerns national procedural law, so any intervention at European level should be strictly limited to the cross-border cases only.
It may be that for these cases a harmonised limitation period of say four years might be considered, or maybe we should adopt clear conflict of laws rules. Whatever the shape of the ultimate solution, practitioners and claimants alike need certainty if valuable and personally critical claims are not to be in danger of being lost because of differing procedural rules that can really cause individual and family misery if things go awry.
This is a practical problem arising out of the use by our citizens of free movement and all that the internal market offers. On our side we should be prepared to respond with a system of European civil justice which does not, as I have said earlier, just add insult to injury.
I hope, Commissioner, that you will feel able to respond to this initiative which has been the subject of a good deal of positive lobbying from citizens and others towards Members during the weeks leading up to this debate."@en1
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