Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-14-Speech-1-138"
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"en.20100614.22.1-138"2
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"− Madam President, may I thank all the Members of this House who have, in a very credible and strong way, supported the area of justice which we have started to build.
The European Treaty of Lisbon gives us the possibility now – by giving us the tools – to move forward step by step, putting in place the rights of the citizens, be it the rights of the convicted, or the rights of the victims. Everything is in the pipeline and will come quickly.
The question related to more proposals forming part of the road map: yes, after the right of interpretation, which I am sure the House will endorse tomorrow, there will be the right of information, the letter of rights which I will put on the table of this House before summer. That will then be followed by the right to legal advice and the right to communicate with people who are dear to the heart.
So you see we are going in a direction which aims to achieve the following: the same high level of rights for all EU citizens wherever they are, whatever their problem. It does not matter whether they are travelling for study, for business or for leisure: they should feel at home, and have the same rights as they have at home, wherever they find themselves in Europe.
One very important question which has been underlined by several members is the question of language. Article 2(1) and Article 3(1) state very clearly that the accused person who does not understand or speak the language of the criminal proceedings concerned has to be provided with interpretation and a translation of the documents. Now this implicitly means that the language into which the proceedings are translated is the language that this person understands. So in fact it does not concern only European Union languages or minority languages. It concerns the language of the person who is in front of a tribunal. I believe that this is only fair because we have to have fair proceedings in order to build the trust of the citizens in our justice system and also, and this is of the utmost importance, in order to ensure the mutual trust of the judges and the prosecutors in neighbouring countries’ systems, which cannot be achieved unless we also have a comparable level of rights.
There was one question by Mr Busuttil and other Members about procedures – not about procedural rights, but about internal procedures – due to the coexistence of a Member State initiative and of a Commission proposal. Well I must say that in this case this really did not hamper in any way the swift adoption of a very high-quality and balanced legislative instrument.
Why did it happen? We are now in a very peculiar period. We are coming out of the third pillar and find ourselves in a normal codecision situation. I suppose that after some months we will have learned how best to utilise the tools which are at our disposal in order to reach the best solutions very swiftly. And when I say reaching the best solutions, I mean in the way we used to prepare such solutions: by having an impact assessment, by also having a call for people to come in and say what they think about our proposals. These are the normal proceedings which we are used to and which will guarantee in the end, via the codecision procedure and after having a public consultation and an impact assessment, that we achieve sound policy. Sound policy which then can be implemented at national level without creating more distortions than rights, as unfortunately has happened in the past.
But we are here with a new Treaty, we are here with a Charter of Fundamental Rights, we are going to become a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. I am very confident that, if we should meet together some years from now, we will say, yes, together we have constructed that area of justice and fundamental rights which our continent must become."@en1
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