Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-05-18-Speech-2-427"
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"en.20100518.32.2-427"2
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"Madam President, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Convention on Human Rights are extraordinary texts. They are the basis of the values on which we have been building our society and our European Union. I think they are much too important and much too historical to give way to party political polemics. I must say that I am very proud indeed that, at this moment in the construction of the European Union, we can go ahead by putting the Charter of Fundamental Rights into practice and by acceding to the Convention on Human Rights.
On litigation: that is not an issue for the European Court of Human Rights or of the European Court of Justice. For the moment, that is an issue for the British system of litigation, and I have already started to discuss this with the British Government to see if they could review this system of litigation, which can, in certain cases, when it comes to the freedom of the press for instance, become very harmful indeed.
The European Parliament has so far, under the leadership of its rapporteurs, done very good work. I count on Parliament to continue to participate in a process which will certainly be a difficult process, a long process, where we have to solve the technical problems – and technical problems can become very political indeed – so I count on Parliament to continue to participate in this very difficult task.
As for relations between the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I leave that in the hands of Parliament. If you need a helping hand, I will be there to help you in that respect, but it is a matter for the parliamentarians themselves to see that they find a common ground and I believe that it should not be that difficult.
Concerning the ICC, this Parliament has already received the Prosecutor, Mr Moreno-Ocampo, and the President of the Court, Mr Song. I think this was a very strong political signal from the European Parliament that Parliament is taking seriously human rights, not only within Europe, but also outside Europe.
We also believe that the Kampala conference is the most important international conference devoted to international justice in a decade. We have to make it count. There again, I count on Parliament also because I know that Members will be present and will be speaking up in Kampala.
We know that the EU has played and will play an important role by integrating the outcomes of the conference into its policies on international justice, on its assistance to third states and, most of all, into all the negotiations which will take place in the coming months and years. In particular, we will continue to support national capacity building in order to strengthen and enable national jurisdictions to conduct credible and effective national investigations and trials of Rome Statute crimes.
Our policy in this respect remains unchanged and undiminished, but we now have a new tool, and the new tool is the Lisbon Treaty, which gives us a new capacity to be more consistent and more effective in our support to the Court. In line with the encouragement by Parliament and expressed in the resolution and during the debate, the High Representative/Vice-President and her services will continue resolutely to promote universal accession to the Rome Statute. We will do that systematically in all our discussions with partners outside of Europe.
There were two very specific questions which I would like to answer briefly.
The first was whether an arrest warrant against President al-Bashir is a part of the solution or part of the problem. The Commission clearly sees this as part of a long-term solution because this arrest warrant shows that, with the establishment of the Court, justice has become imminent. Whoever the person is, even if this person is a Head of State, and even if this arrest warrant is not immediately enforced, it will not disappear because the ICC is a permanent court, so let me assure you that the EU will continue to call on Sudan to cooperate fully with the Court.
On the question of whether the Commission will present amendments in the Kampala meeting, here the answer is ‘no’ because the EU, as such, is not a party – it is the Member States who will negotiate the amendments. However, the Commission will play an active role in the stock-taking part of the conference, and we count fully on the Spanish Presidency to lead the European nations so that their voice will make a big difference in this conference.
When I hear what your rapporteur, Diego López Garrido, and your co-rapporteurs, Cristian Dan Preda and Kinga Gál, have said in your name in this Parliament, I know that you are also very conscious about the historical task which is now in our hands. The added value of the accession has been very well explained in those texts and in the contributions of many of the Members.
The Member States have all signed up to the Convention but they have also – as the Minister-in-Office of the Council just explained – transferred substantial competences to the European Union. It is therefore normal that the European Union, when it acts as a European Union, will be subject to the same external control of the specialised Court on Human Rights as are the Member States.
To give one very concrete example, there could be a decision of the European Commission against an industry in the area of competition law which could be potentially challenged directly before the Court in Strasbourg, which is something that is difficult to do today. As you have already pointed out, there will be a lot of very concrete examples: concrete examples which will help the citizens because – and this is something new – they will now have a double guarantee. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg will judge on the basis of the Charter of Fundamental Rights which, by the way, is binding for all Member States. That should be clearly stated once and for all.
I cannot understand how somebody who has an elected mandate and has been elected by citizens can call into question the rights of those citizens. It is better for citizens to have twice the rights than to have zero rights. Here, we are giving them twice the rights, and that is what Europe is about. Europe is about rights for European citizens and I am very proud that this House is standing for those rights. Yes, we will now have the bills of rights where the citizens will know that they can go to the courts in order to have their rights taken seriously.
The question of whether or not we shall now be part of the Convention on Human Rights is not a question anymore because Article 6 of the treaty obliges the EU to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. So I do not think we should discuss this any further because that is simply done.
We should also know that this accession will leave the position of the individual Member States, vis-à-vis the convention, completely unaffected as long as there is no European law at stake. This will continue to be the case. The individual relationship between a Member State and the convention will stay exactly the same as it is. Now there will be supplementary guarantees concerning the EU law.
Of course the issue of the risk of conflicting jurisprudence has to be analysed. It is being analysed and I am grateful to the rapporteur who has taken this issue on board. We have so far seen that these conflicts are considered to be minimal because the convention is already part of the norms which the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg takes into account today and the convention will operate as a minimum standard. The Commission expects case-law of Strasbourg and of Luxembourg to develop harmoniously and converge in the coming years.
I now move to more specific questions."@en1
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