Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-14-Speech-2-034"
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"en.20101214.5.2-034"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank all the committee members who worked alongside the rapporteur, Mrs Gál, on these areas, as well as all those MEPs who took the floor today in this House, thereby showing that fundamental rights are very important. I can only support what has already been said by several MEPs, namely that it is high time that we focused on fundamental rights within the European Union in order to be credible and be able to talk about fundamental rights outside the European Union. This issue has been somewhat neglected. It will no longer be in future.
I think that the Commission’s annual report on the application of the Charter, which will elaborate on all the observations made by everyone regarding specific types of discrimination, will truly enable us every year to discuss what is not working and try to correct it.
Correct it how? There is this idea of a ‘freezing mechanism’, as the rapporteur called it, this prevention system where one would intervene with regard to a measure being taken in a Member State up to the point at which it is implemented. I have asked my experts to analyse this, and the institutional issues that such a mechanism raises are very complex. For the time being, although we will have to continue the analysis and see what is really happening, it seems to me that there is no legal basis to act in such a way and that a change in the Treaty would be needed to activate such a prevention mechanism. It is an attractive idea. We will carry on looking for a mechanism that could be used without changing the Treaty so as to deal with the most pressing issues.
Nevertheless, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the Charter is not applicable in absolute terms, because this is a common misconception. It is applicable only when Member States implement European rules, for instance, when a European directive that has been decided between the Council and Parliament is then integrated into European law. In that situation, the Charter does apply, but not in absolute terms. In absolute terms, that is to say, for all other cases, jurisdiction lies with the national courts.
When the European Union becomes a member of the Council of Europe Convention, there will be an extra dimension that we will then have to implement, and it concerns the way in which we manage our rights policy. This is what seems to me to be of utmost importance, beyond all the specific questions that have been asked – and I will respond individually to the MEPs who asked them – I think that the main issue is the fundamental one.
Outside the EU, in our Member States, within governments, the importance of the Charter has not yet been fully realised. Therefore, we have some work to do to raise awareness so that this culture of rights, this policy of values exists throughout Europe, so that, when a law is passed, when a law is applied, people everywhere ask themselves if it complies with the values we have subscribed to; that is to say that, as political leaders, we must ask ourselves almost systematically, when we act, whether what we are doing is compatible with the fundamental rights we have subscribed to.
This seems to me to be the most important element. As a matter of fact, I can tell you that the Commission is due to take a decision today on whether to scrap the exequatur, in other words, that a proposal will be submitted to make court rulings valid anywhere in Europe. This is a decision of major importance, and for the first time, when proposing this new legislation, we focused on respect for fundamental rights. We did not just carry out an economic analysis, or study the impact on the market; we also studied the impact on values.
As you can tell, we are gradually moving towards this new policy, and I think that, between us – the Commission, the Council and Parliament – we should ensure that this annual report on the application of the Charter, which I will submit on behalf of the Commission and which Parliament will criticise or approve, is a great moment of truth and an opportunity to take a close look at matters. This is also about truly showing to the outside world, to our voters, that the Charter is a living entity. The Charter is not merely a text; it is there to be put into practice. And if it is not put into practice, the elected representatives of the people will say so loud and clear.
This is what we must try to establish during the two or three years before the next elections. I think we can achieve this goal gradually, with the first exercise of this kind in spring, then the establishment of a tradition in this House, so that no one can ever say again, when you examine human rights outside the Union on Wednesdays or Thursdays, ‘You have not put your own house in order’. Let us do it together!"@en1
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