Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-19-Speech-3-127"
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Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is rather moving for me to return to this House in my capacity as a Member of the Council.
As regards our replies to Mrs Terrón i Cusí, I shall try to respond to her questions on home affairs, and my colleague will then address the points relating to justice.
As you know, the Schengen
applies in full to ten countries, and in the course of 2000, work will be done with a view to reaching a decision on the
coming into force in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, and also in Iceland and Norway. The Secretary-General of the Council has published a collection of documents covering the entire Schengen
pending publication in the Official Journal once all the translations are available. This collection is, at present, available in six languages and the remaining translations are nearing completion.
Another issue I wish to raise concerns programmes in the field of immigration and asylum and how they apply to the CEECs. In March 1998, the Council adopted the Odysseus programme, a programme of training, exchanges and cooperation in the fields of policy on asylum, immigration and crossing of external borders. It applies to the fifteen Member States of the Union and provides for applicant countries, and possibly third countries also, to be associated with it.
This programme covers the period 1998 to 2002, and the reference amount for its implementation is EUR 12 million. Applicant countries can be associated with projects selected by the management committee as long as this complies with the objectives of the programme. The financial envelope envisaged for 2000 is EUR 3 million.
Under the 1999 programme, the Commission received 80 applications for finance, totalling EUR 7.5 million, against a budget for 1999 of EUR 3 million. The Commission proposed support for 35 projects, of which 12 were for EUR 50 000 and 23 for amounts over EUR 50 000.
With regard to the OISIN programme, and I am now referring to the 1997 budget year, projects were adopted for seminars, training, exchanges of officials, research and studies, and operational actions. Of 62 projects in all, seven included applicant countries.
As regards SIS, the Schengen Information System, I am pleased to report that the Member States were very positive about its operation and use. The increase in the number of positive results demonstrates the efficiency of the system and there is a continuing increase in the number of reports.
With a view to developing a customs information system, agreement was reached with the Commission on a system which will permit provisional application of the Convention on the Customs Information System as soon as a certain number of countries have ratified this convention.
Mrs Terrón i Cusí also mentioned an interinstitutional agreement. I ought to comment on this final point once my colleague, the Minister for Justice, has spoken, but it is obvious that what I shall say is the result of an exchange of impressions within the Council, and in particular between the two of us.
I referred earlier to a new relationship with the Commission and with Parliament, with a view to achieving closer links and providing Parliament with timely information on subjects to be discussed by the Council. I would now like to state before you here that we firmly intend to consult the European Parliament, not only in those cases stipulated by the Treaty, which we are obliged to do, but also to inform and consult Parliament whenever we believe that it is appropriate to widen this type of consultation, and when, in direct contact with the Commission, we believe that Parliament should be able to present its opinion.
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As regards information, we will communicate with Parliament on all matters which are important for establishing the area of freedom, security and justice. This partnership between the Council and Parliament, building on the Commission’s role and the excellent work Commissioner Vitorino has always done, will make it possible for the Portuguese Presidency to represent a landmark in establishing this area of freedom, security and justice.
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I was one of the first Portuguese Members of this House who, in 1986, took the first steps towards the integration of Portugal into the European Union, and I have to say, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, that the experience I gained here, political experience, has been extremely important in my life, and that the information we gained and the contribution that we were all able to make towards building Europe definitely marked the years that I spent here, and indeed my life.
So it is with some pride and satisfaction that I find myself here and able to meet up again with some of my colleagues from those days who are still in this House. The point I wish to make is that the Portuguese Presidency – to which the Minister for Justice, who is handling the field of justice and home affairs, and I myself both belong – wishes to usher in a new era with this Parliament, and to foster the relationship between the Council and Parliament. This will inevitably be influenced by my parliamentary experience in this House, and of course by the parliamentary experience of that great Member of our national Parliament who is now the Minister for Justice and my colleague.
We gave an early signal when, before the start of the Portuguese Presidency, we met with the President and Vice-Presidents of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs in Brussels. We were able to invite the Chairman of that committee, Mr Watson, and some members of the committee to come to Lisbon, and to present our views concerning the role of the Portuguese Presidency in this area to them. And we gave an undertaking then that I now want to repeat formally: during all meetings of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, a representative of the Council, at political level, not an official but a political representative of the Council, from one of our ‘
’, will always be involved in the work of the committee …
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and whenever the committee thinks fit, and the Chairman requests it, I myself or my colleague, the Minister for Justice, will come to Brussels to take part in the work of the meeting. We will accordingly give the Chairman of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs the provisional agendas for the Council meetings in March and May, to allow contact to be established beforehand on the subjects to be discussed in the Council. We will do this today.
Turning to 1999, we find ourselves in the special position of taking stock of the German and Finnish Presidencies. I would like to start by saying that, in addition to the replies that we shall be giving here to Mrs Terrón i Cusí, who has presented a proposal on behalf of her committee, we shall also be letting her have a written reply at the end of these discussions. Furthermore, I would like to say that the Council believes that 1999 was an important year in the field of justice and home affairs.
Cooperation in the field of justice and home affairs was notable for the significant changes wrought by the Treaty of Amsterdam and, as a consequence, for the incorporation of Schengen into the Community framework. The German Presidency had an important task in this respect in achieving the transition from the Maastricht system to the Amsterdam system. Then there was the launching of Europol soon after the start of the Finnish Presidency, on 1 July 1999. There was also a third notable event: the Tampere Summit, a European Council devoted exclusively to justice and home affairs. The Tampere Summit was marked by a new spirit and by a determination to put the area of freedom, security and justice at the top of the political agenda and to keep it there. The point that the Portuguese Presidency wishes to reiterate here is that we intend to keep issues connected with the area of freedom, security and justice at the top of the presidency’s political agenda."@en1
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