Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-051"
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"en.20001003.2.2-051"2
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"Mr President, Mr Prodi, as has often been said in this House, the Charter of Fundamental Rights is the end result of genuine democratic cooperation. Representatives from both our own parliament and national parliaments and governments worked on it. This cooperation produced an excellent result, in spite of some misgivings. We might ask whether this model of successful cooperation should be continued in the future?
Many of our citizens feel the European Union is distant and bureaucratic. Their distrust of the Union must be taken seriously. We have to pay particular attention to relations between the people and the Union’s institutions. For that reason, I am very glad that the Charter on Fundamental Rights emphasises the principle of transparency, although it could still be put in stronger terms.
Despite the demands made here today in this House, it would appear that the Charter is not going to be made legally binding, but is merely to be a political declaration. I use the word ‘merely’, although I believe that, despite its declaratory nature, the EC Court will have to apply the Articles of the Charter in their judicial practices as self-binding principles, with which the interpretation of the court must naturally be in harmony. In this way they will gradually become
legally binding legal norms.
The Charter is an indication that the Union bears a responsibility for and cares about human rights. For the implementation of human rights to be monitored in practice also, however, the Union must have clear rules regarding possible sanction mechanisms to be used against Member States. At present, the Council is talking about incorporating such mechanisms in Article 7. An agreement on procedures in itself is a good thing, but we must make sure that the system cannot be used as a political weapon. According to ancient Finnish wisdom, you should examine a person first before hitting him. At present I feel there is a danger that if the proposal by the Belgian Government on these sanction mechanisms were to be implemented, we would be hitting first and examining only afterwards. I hope that the sanction mechanisms will be discussed further before the summits at Biarritz and Nice."@en1
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