Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-11-19-Speech-1-061-000"
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"en.20121119.18.1-061-000"2
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". − Mr President, I would like to thank the Committee on Legal Affairs for having raised this very important question because we all know that parental child abduction is a tragedy that has very often substantial long-term consequences for the child. The prevention of child abduction should therefore be a central part of EU policy to promote the rights of the child and, in international cases, multilateral rules are key to ensuring the protection of children.
Since 2007 the European Union has been a full member of The Hague Conference on Private International Law and in that context the Union supports the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and encourages third states to accede to it. To date there are 87 contracting parties to the Hague Convention, including all the EU Member States.
The Convention establishes a system of cooperation between the contracting parties to restore the
of the wrongfully removed or retained child, but for these systems to operate an explicit declaration of acceptance is necessary and this is why the Commission last year presented a package of proposals for the EU’s acceptance of the accession of eight new contracting parties to the Convention, including key partners such as Russia and Morocco.
The adoption of such proposals would ensure that all Member States have the possibility to use the Hague Mechanism with all the contracting parties of the Convention for very concrete child abduction cases; this would be in the best interest of children and it would also respect the principle of the unity and external representation of the European Union.
I really do regret that this package has been blocked in the Council for almost a year. In practice this means, for example, that Singapore’s accession has been accepted by 10 Member States, Morocco’s by 14 and Seychelles’ by 18 Member States. It also means that after having promoted Russia’s accession for many years and having finally persuaded Russia to accede, the European Union as a whole is now not able to accept this accession and the Russian authorities are of course raising this with us in the regular high-level meetings we have.
I deeply regret that despite their declarations of intent, the Member States as a whole have so far failed to show the sensitivity and the political will which are needed in order to tackle the current fragmented situation in the field of international child abduction. I am afraid that we may need to ask the Court of Justice to deliver a verdict on this institutional dispute on competences which has very undesirable consequences. I would like to thank the rapporteur, Ms Lichtenberger, for having supported the Commission’s proposal and the Committee on Legal Affairs as a whole for having worked on this. We share the same urgent need to protect children, prevent child abductions and minimise the distress that families suffer due to the legal uncertainty and the lack of a simple and unified procedure at EU level in this matter. I really regret that we are fighting about procedures instead of fighting for the good of the child."@en1
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