Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-11-Speech-2-163"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20011211.9.2-163"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr Heaton-Harris, the debate a fortnight ago was about the directive on the protection of Community financial interests, a directive in which the offences of fraud, corruption and money-laundering were defined, and, moreover, in terms already agreed on in 1995 by all Member States, the United Kingdom included. That agreement, though, is not yet in force, and the Commission therefore proposed to include it in a directive.
Like the Commission, Parliament was of the opinion that the directive was not the right place for a definition of a Public Prosecutor, both of them being convinced that the creation of a European Public Prosecutor could not be accomplished by a directive, but would need an amendment to the Treaties. It was for that reason that Parliament struck out a Member's proposal that it should be dealt with in the directive, but doing so was not a vote against the European Public Prosecutor. This, I think, is something we must stick to.
You are right to ask now what the duties of the European Public Prosecutor might be. One is that he will take over the direction and coordination of law enforcement and also direct investigations, which would themselves be conducted according to national law. The European Public Prosecutor would then be entitled, having assembled incriminatory and exculpatory evidence, to bring charges on the basis of that evidence, and this would also be done in accordance with national law and in a national court, so there is no question of creating some huge new apparatus or a new European penal code – we all know how much scepticism there still is about that. Many of these cases are listed in our Green Paper. There was, for example, the regulation that, where evidence was gathered in one Member State and then, crime knowing no frontiers, was used in a cross-frontier case before another court, it could be objected to on the grounds that it had been gathered in accordance with administrative law. That is something we do not recognise. It often happens that there is a mass of evidence of fraud being committed against the European budget, but the evidence is, as it were – legally rather than bureaucratically – defined out of existence, because of the sort of differences that there are. I do not believe that is in the public interest, and it is certainly not in the interests of Parliament. I would ask you, Mr Heaton-Harris, to examine this proposal with an unprejudiced mind. We have said that we are committed to applying the subsidiarity principle, but we do of course want there to be real protection in criminal law for Community interests."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples