Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-16-Speech-2-129"
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"en.19991116.7.2-129"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Commission, I would like firstly to express my pleasure that the opinions relating to the proposal for a directive on the service of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil and commercial matters have been adopted, as well as the proposal for a regulation on the competence, recognition and implementation of judgements on matrimonial matters. I would particularly like to congratulate Mr Lechner and Mr Gebhardt for their excellent work as the rapporteurs of these two initiatives. These two instruments constitute one of the foundation stones of the Community building that we are constructing, the main aim of which is to give all the Union’s citizens and legal operators easier, more rapid and more efficient access to justice with a safeguard from the rules of legal security.
As far as the proposal for a regulation is concerned, by reducing the time it takes to transmit judicial and extrajudicial documents from one Member State to another, we are adopting an instrument which will enable the judicial processes to progress in the best conditions of speed and legal security whilst preserving the rights of all parties involved.
I would particularly like to highlight the importance of adopting the proposal for a regulation which constitutes a cornerstone of the creation at Community level of a European legal area. To this effect, the Tampere European Council made the mutual recognition of judgements one of the pivotal points in the development of an area of freedom, security and justice. The Heads of State and Government themselves recognised the fact that priority must be given to family relationships and particularly to resolving issues of divorce and parental responsibility.
If the movement of people within the European Union is going to be more than an empty phrase, it must be accompanied by the necessary measures in the field of family law. This proposal is the first, and only the first of these measures, because it provides standardised rules on the jurisdiction of courts in the Member States in matters of divorce and separation as well as in the matter of processes relating to the enforcement of parental responsibility, and even provides a clear and coherent framework for rapid, practically automatic recognition in every Member State of judgements made in another Member State within the scope of the regulation. These are legal instruments that will open the way for the future adoption of other solutions that go further in the direction the Tampere European Council wanted.
As far as the directive is concerned, the Council can accept practically all of the amendments, except the amendments relating to Nos 3, 5 and 10, which we feel do not fit in with the proposal’s premise.
If I am not mistaken, Amendment No 3 brings nothing new to the measure in question, in that the Member States which will designate a single authority and then a central authority are precisely the ones whose legislation does not allow for the direct transmission of judgements. As for Amendment No 5, we feel that it places an excessive burden on the central authorities in the context of a directive-based system in which these central authorities have only a subsidiary function. And finally, concerning Amendment No 10, we feel that it contradicts Article 11(2) of the proposal for a directive.
As far as the proposal for a regulation is concerned, we can accept most of the proposed amendments, namely Amendments Nos 1 to 8, 13 to 18 and 20.
We feel that Amendments Nos 9 and 10 can be partially accepted, with a slight alteration which does not change them fundamentally. We have objections to three amendments: Nos 11, 12 and 19. Concerning Amendment No 11 – and I hope that a new oral proposal will be made so that I can comment on the new version – where it states that the best interests of the child must be taken into account, we feel that this would clear the way for a judgement to be made – with regard to the costs to be borne by the State due to receive the judgement – which is not appropriate for this kind of instrument. We agree, therefore, with the principle of child hearings, but not with a new judgement on this basis. We feel Amendment No 12 gives an advantage to the mechanical implementation of a possible, out of date judgement over a more recent one which may have been issued on the same matter. Priority must be given to the most recent judgement, because that will be the one that best takes into account the child’s situation at the time the verdict is made. And finally, in relation to Amendment No 19, I understand the meaning of the proposal, but I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the rule concerning the translation of decisions does not fall within the scope of a regulation on the competence, recognition and implementation of judgements; the proper place for the rule on translations is the directive on the transmission of documents, the other instrument that we are debating today, which lays down precisely this possibility of translation.
Finally, Mr President, I am convinced that by adopting these instruments we are giving a great boost to the free movement of persons today. And we are providing a balanced boost, because, on the one hand, we are favouring the internal market and economic integration with the directive on judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil and commercial matters, but, on the other hand, we are also attempting to give primacy to people’s rights, to the rights of human beings and to the rights of children, because, in addition to having to suffer the trauma that a divorce always causes, they should not have to suffer the trauma of the bureaucratic nightmare that the recognition of judgements involves. And this is at last proof that the Union provides added value for our citizens’ actual lives. And thus we honour a major principle of the project of European construction, which is designed to think of people, by people and for people."@en1
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