Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-12-Speech-3-043"

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"Mr President, the European arrest warrant was saved in the nick of time. It was dragged away from the gates of Laeken. How pleased should we be now? The creation of an area of freedom, security and justice goes to the very core of the relationship between governments and citizens. The exercising of legitimate pressure versus the upholding of the citizen’s essential fundamental rights. In the past, revolutions were fought and extensive constitutional debates were held in Europe over this tense relationship. However, legislation on this matter is now being introduced in the third pillar of the European Union by means of framework resolutions engineered by the Council using secret diplomacy, monitored by national parliaments and the European Parliament. In this respect, we are back in the 19th Century. Our desire to reform the European decision-making process and to close the so-called democratic loophole are well-known. However, it will require a Treaty change and sufficient political will to do this, but we cannot wait that long. The procedure concerning the European arrest warrant demonstrates that a critical boundary has been crossed. Our own credibility as representatives of the people is at stake, so democratic legitimacy must also be increased in the current Treaty in the near future. The proposal that was recently adopted in the Dutch Upper Chamber is one way of doing this. It asks for the introduction of a phase of active openness in the Council’s decision-making process. According to this proposal, a final decision on draft framework resolutions is only taken after a period of at least six weeks, during which time citizens and organisations in the Member States are given the opportunity to form their opinions. The role of national parliaments and the European Parliament should also gain in significance in this way. This would at the very least prevent us from voting on out-of-date documents as we did in November, or only nodding our assent retrospectively, which we may do this week. I propose that we lay down such a modest reform of the decision-making process in a new interinstitutional agreement, and if anyone thinks that this is asking too much, they should say so."@en1

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