Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-11-Speech-1-064"
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"en.20001211.3.1-064"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I should like to correct a misapprehension: the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market rejected the directive as a whole as early as the first reading, although it is true that Parliament did not go along with it. Following the European Court of Justice ruling the Committee then adopted the opinion again, admittedly this time by a large majority. It is true that the Court's ruling did not, in fact, significantly change the legal position, but it did develop it; some aspects have now been clarified and some points are clearer. In fact, it does not actually have anything to do with tobacco: the European Court of Justice's judgment might just as well have been handed down in relation to an advertising ban on alcohol, for example, or an advertising ban on chocolate, because we know that sugar can also be damaging to human health.
In my opinion, the superficial way in which the Commission and the Council of Ministers have examined this Court ruling in their discussions hitherto is shameful. In fact, it would be truer to say that they have not examined it at all; they have completely ignored it, as Commissioner Byrne did just now, and as is also the case, for example, in the statement of reasons for the common position, in which it was not deemed necessary even to correct and make some adjustments to the recitals either. The only laudable exception is Parliament's Legal Service.
Unfortunately, time does not allow me to go into detail here; that is quite impossible. I can only call on colleagues to go along with the recommendation of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market. This is not about the tobacco industry; quite simply it is about upholding the Treaties. Neither is it about legalistic hair-splitting; it is about an eminently political question, which it does not require any legal training to answer. It is simply about respecting areas of competence and safeguarding subsidiarity and also, for example, the rights of colleagues in the national parliaments, who, of course, are entitled to have their own areas of competence.
This very issue of delimiting competences was addressed in Nice. But if whenever a material majority is found on a specific issue in the three bodies – the Commission, the Council of Ministers and Parliament – this majority is also observed, then we can do without this ceremony and it would suggest that what really matters are institutional safeguards. I hope and assume – and here I am also placing my trust in the European Court of Justice – that it will continue to hold its previous course, that it will agree to step up its efforts to safeguard competences and that, for this reason, it will once again annul the directive."@en1
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