Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-03-Speech-1-122"
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"en.20070903.17.1-122"2
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"Mr President, I did not think I was going to get to make this speech, I thought I would have to send it to you later, but I very much wanted to participate on behalf of my group. Clearly, these are four very important reports that we have been discussing on better law-making. Although it is rare, I have to say that I have some sympathy with our colleagues from the right of the House when they say that four reports on better law-making is a bit of a blockbuster, is it not? Could we not perhaps have had one clear, simple report?
I would like to concentrate my remarks on the issue of soft law and Mr Medina Ortega’s report. Soft law is a worry. It can be a very useful process to use soft law but it can also lead to fuzziness, unclarity and difficulties. Mr Medina Ortega tries to be very clear in his report and I applaud that, but there will always be a wish amongst legislators to use, as it were, alternative regulatory methods other than black letter law.
We have to admit that the state cannot do everything, but if we admit that, we also have to be very clear about the dangers of using soft law. First of all, soft law, as many of my colleagues in the Committee on Legal Affairs have already said, has a propensity to bypass the legislator, to bypass Parliament, to bypass democracy – and that is entirely unacceptable. We have to be aware of this danger and make sure that it does not happen. We have seen one very clear example with a very important project to do with European contract law, which absolutely should be discussed and discussed politically, but because of the way in which it was dealt with it came before us as a soft law instrument.
There is also a further difficulty when we use soft or alternative methods to do with justice and access to justice. If we use alternative methods
we often talk about alternative dispute resolution systems at European level
these, again, are not backed by a state structure. A constituent of mine recently returned from a holiday in another EU country. He had lost out on car rental and was forced to use an alternative system, and the car hire company would not participate. That is when soft systems not backed by black letter law fail our citizens and do not deliver justice.
If we want an EU that delivers justice both in the law we make and the way it is accessible through the courts, we have to be very careful about soft law and make sure that it is still backed in some way by the state."@en1
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