Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-14-Speech-3-342"
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"en.20070314.24.3-342"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, at prime media time this morning, in the course of the debate on the Berlin Declaration, we celebrated the Union as a common system of law, and we all agreed that what holds this system together at heart is human dignity and fundamental rights and freedoms.
At a late hour this evening we are now discussing the everyday business of this common system of law: the enforcement – an arduous task – and protection of these fundamental rights and freedoms. Those who have long been working on the everyday business of fundamental rights in Europe will be aware of three irritations. Firstly, for the achievement of its economic and monetary-policy objectives, the Union has hard law, specific objectives, penalties if need be, large amounts of money and tough action; whereas fundamental rights and freedoms at European level have only soft law.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights is still not binding. Some Member States are even calling for its removal from the Constitution. The EU is not a member of the European Commission of Human Rights. Organisations such as Europol, Eurojust and Frontex do not fall under the European Convention on Human Rights. Police cooperation is still not Community law, and it evades scrutiny by national parliaments and the European Parliament. A grey area of fundamental rights is emerging in Europe.
The second irritation – which I am seeing more and more in my debates on the Constitution – is that cracks have emerged in the original confidence of the European public in the will and ability of this Union to enforce fundamental rights and freedoms uncompromisingly. The CIA affair, the illegal kidnappings, the illegal overflights and the lack of cooperation by governments have been contributory factors, as have the negative judgments of the European Court of Justice on the transfer of passenger data and SWIFT bank data and the lack of legal bases for Union action. All of this has dented the original confidence of the public in the will and ability of the Union to protect these fundamental rights uncompromisingly.
The third irritation concerns the Commission’s monitoring. Commissioner, I do not know how often this House is supposed to carry on demanding that the Commission’s work and proposals on the protection of fundamental rights be more systematic, less restrictive, more public; or that the Commission increase the involvement of civil society and of independent experts and organisations. We did so in the report on Article 7; we did so in the reports on the Human Rights Agency; we did so with regard to the accession treaties. Yet the Commission gives the impression of being unsure, indecisive, in this field. Its choices are often incomprehensible, and its pressure on the Council and the Member States is often insufficient. We welcome the procedure for enforcing the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Commission’s legislative proposals: it represents progress. Nevertheless, it is insufficient, and it suffers from all the things this House has pointed out so many times already.
Checking against the Charter of Fundamental Rights cannot be smuggled in via social, environmental and economic criteria, but must be a criterion in itself. Every one of the Commission’s legislative initiatives must be checked against the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and this checking must be substantiated and documented in all cases. How often have we demanded – as we are doing again – that the Commission show greater respect for the particular responsibility of Parliament as advocate of the European public for the protection of fundamental rights? We did this when we dealt with Article 7, the Agency and the accession negotiations. We called for increased involvement of NGOs, international organisations and the Human Rights Agency. How much longer do we need to go on doing this? How much longer do we need to go on demanding continuous dialogue between the institutions?
The outstanding part of the Commission’s proposal is its talk of the development of a fundamental-rights culture. We share this ambition and support it. Yet this development requires a systematic, continuous, open dialogue between the institutions; it requires reports; it requires that the institutions be given the right to point out abuses and wrong turns in the Member States. It is also essential that the Commission’s monitoring system be extended to the field of intergovernmental cooperation and to the comitology system.
Commissioner, we are repeating our demands. We are doing so at a late hour, without public exposure, without anything. I do think, however, that it is time the Commission responded to Parliament’s wishes and demands in this field."@en1
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