Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-13-Speech-2-577-000"
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"en.20110913.42.2-577-000"2
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"Mr President, I should like to say thank you very much for all the contributions by the honourable Members and the excellent work done by the Committee on Petitions. Allow me to respond to some of the comments.
Firstly, we all know that one of the Commission’s very important roles is to be the guardian of the treaties, so we have to respect the law. We have to respect the division of labour between European and national levels and our stance must be always legally precise and correct. Otherwise, every step we take, every act we adopt, could be challenged in the European Court of Justice. Therefore, sometimes an approach that you may find cautious is very important from the point of view of how correctly we apply the law because we are responsible for monitoring that European law is always correctly applied. We must therefore lead by example.
I understand your preoccupations and that a lot of the petitioners who are unhappy with the results of their efforts then complain that they were not properly informed in advance. I therefore think Mr Jahr’s idea to improve communication on pieces of legislation that are particularly complicated – which is usually the case in the field of the environment – is very important. We particularly appreciate the fact that both Ms Mazzoni and Ms Auken participated in the seminar organised by DG Environment because this is exactly how we would like to promote awareness on these very complicated pieces of legislation.
Another item which was highlighted several times by Members is the element of fundamental rights. Here again, we have to respect the law, and the fact that the fundamental rights in the Charter cannot be invoked outside the scope of the EU is, we know, a frequent source of disappointment for petitioners.
Therefore, again with your help and cooperation, we are going to organise a special conference on the workability of the Charter early next month, on 6 October. I am sure that this will also help to raise awareness of what is applicable and what is not and how the EU Charter can be applied and monitored by the EU institutions.
Finally, the European Citizens’ Initiative. We have been working very closely with the Committee on Petitions and Ms Mazzoni, and we have been going through the regulations. There is interest in the European Parliament, and the number of rapporteurs proves how important the ECI is for the European Parliament also. I was therefore glad that in the end, we could find a compromise where we agreed that the hearings would be organised at the European Parliament because we in the Commission also found it very important for parliamentary ground to be used for the deliberations at these hearings.
I am sure that the Committee on Petitions will be properly involved, but of course it would be an internal European Parliament decision to decide how the European Citizens’ Initiative will be treated by the European Parliament and the respective committees."@en1
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