Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-278"
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"en.19991118.15.4-278"2
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"Mr President, we would have liked the debate and the vote on this report not to have to take place today because – and I should like to say this right at the beginning – owing to the circumstances that led to the agenda being amended today and because of the fact that the voting time took so long because of the long Napolitano, Leinen, Dimitrakopoulos and Schwaiger reports, we will be voting on Mrs Giannakou-Koutsikou’s report tomorrow morning.
Friday morning in Strasbourg is the day when there is the most pressure. Tomorrow the plenary sitting will be bursting with Members crowding in to vote on the Giannakou report. If there are fifty, that will be a lot. I venture to make this comment because it is a glaring contradiction to the other assertion that Mrs Giannakou’s report is so important and it should therefore absolutely be discussed and voted on this week. There is no logic behind that.
In fact, our colleague’s report is an important report and must be discussed very carefully, among other reasons because the debate on the report has once again shown that drugs policy in the European Union is one of the most controversial subjects that we have ever had to discuss.
I would first of all address a comment to the rapporteur. I believe that Mrs Giannakou has taken a lot of trouble to give an opinion on the action plan in a form that was geared to a consensus and was determined in such a way as to integrate the different ways of looking at the situation that not only go right through the political “families” but are also characterised by national traditions, by different factors and by partially conflicting interests. So our Group wishes to thank the rapporteur most warmly.
I will say on behalf of my absent colleague Jan Andersson, who as a Swedish Member of Parliament – I shall speak about that again in a minute – was in a very difficult position, because Sweden is one of the Member States that has a very special approach to drugs policy, owing to its national experience and national tradition and which despite this I believe, as you do, Mrs Giannakou, with the compromise amendments have ensured that this report is actually structured in such a way that it will receive broad approval.
128 amendments were submitted and you finally formulated 17 or 18 compromise amendments that should help to focus this profusion of amendments so that in the end a logical and conclusive report by the Parliament emerges on this action plan. The words “logical” and “conclusive” really mean that three essential aspects have to be taken into consideration.
Firstly, all of us, whether on the right or left of this House must be clear and I do believe that the approach to drug policy must start from one premise: drug addicts do not on principle need punishment and persecution but help and support. That is really self-evident. Why do I have to mention that again here? Because the way in which we help these people to reintegrate into society, the way in which we reduce their personal, individual suffering must derive from specific regional, local and national experiences. So there cannot be an officially prescribed European drugs policy but there must be a European framework within which help can be provided to the people affected who are the focus here, on the basis of the specific experiences of the local and regional authorities.
The second aspect is that in our drugs policy we must bear in mind that in hardly any other branch of crime in Europe is more money earned than in the drug trade. That means that we can talk about reducing the supply, which is a very important factor but it still means that those people who supply drugs on the market must be pursued regardless. For this we need criminal law and the police. But we also need a factor that I feel has not been touched on adequately in the debate. Those people who deal in drugs generally do so if it is on a large scale, intending to make a profit and to enrich themselves. Everywhere we succeed in preventing illegal income from drug dealing from being converted into legal income, we have made great progress, that is to say, the battle against the drug trade and money laundering are phenomena that are linked. Policy on combating drugs – I address this to the Commissioner for internal security – therefore means that by reducing the supply there will be the resulting prosecution of the drug dealer, particularly in the area of money laundering.
This is the third and final aspect, with which I will conclude. We all have different experiences. In one country in the European Union there is a rather permissive approach, in another a rather restrictive one. Overall if we consider the results of the Drug Monitoring Centre in Lisbon – almost everywhere there is an equally high drugs rate. This means that whatever the approach we adopt at present we are equally successful or unsuccessful. This means that we should set the parameters at a European scale and that implementation should be subsidiary and based on the respective national experiences."@en1
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