Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-07-09-Speech-1-203"
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"en.20070709.21.1-203"2
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".
Mr President, those who already wanted more government pressure in the areas of the army, police, security services, all kinds of other control system and the prison system in the past have been able to reinforce their position since the turn of the century. They can now refer to the advent of a new kind of terrorism, which, as it came as a shock to everyone, creates scope for ill-thought-out solutions.
At all administrative levels, proposals have been moved to subject democracy, the freedom of association, the freedom of demonstration, the right to strike, the freedom to travel and privacy to the proposed guarantees for security. The trouble with this line of attack is that it does nothing to remove the seedbed from which terrorism springs, including the utter inequality in wealth or power that divides the world.
Instead, we collect more intelligence, monitor more objects, organise more bureaucracy and bring about more displeasure. In the European Union, in the area of critical infrastructure, there are already 32 directives, regulations, treaties and decisions that make a European approach possible. This is why adding a new directive with yet more powers and obligations has raised a few eyebrows.
In January, the committee for the subsidiarity test of the Dutch Parliament drew my attention to this very subject. This committee is calling into question Article 308 of the EC Treaty, which focuses on the interim enhancement of powers, as a legal basis, and considers the protection of critical infrastructure to be first of all a national affair.
As shadow rapporteur on this subject in the Committee on Transport and Tourism, I was delighted to find that this committee decided to invite the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs to emphatically reject the proposal. The main reason for this request was that everything that is in the draft Directive can be regulated more effectively on a smaller scale, in other words by the Member States or their regions. In this case, more interference from the European Union means, above all, more unproductive bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, the groups that voted ‘no’ unanimously in the Committee on Transport were divided in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. My group was no different. Most smaller national delegations consider this to be a poor proposal, partly because unnecessary interference obscures the division of tasks between the Member States and the Union, and partly because it may be used inappropriately in order to cut down on civil rights, such as the freedom of demonstration, by referring to the protection of infrastructure, in which case it does not affect international terrorism, but rather domestic democracy.
By contrast, the members of our larger delegations from Germany and Italy also see positive points in the proposal. They expect a reduction in the powers that are already being exercised by the Commission anyway and better parliamentary control of the application of the remaining powers. Those in favour and against in my group applaud the fact that the amendments predominantly weaken the effect of the draft and confine the application to matters that affect at least three Member States."@en1
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