Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-17-Speech-4-134"
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"en.20020117.6.4-134"2
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I too wish to offer my particular congratulations to Mrs Cederschiöld on her election as Vice-President of this Parliament. The Commission welcomes the initiative we are debating today of the United Kingdom, the Republic of France and the Kingdom of Sweden which seeks to guarantee the mutual recognition of financial penalties. It is worth pointing out that this issue was addressed in the Commission communication on the mutual recognition of final decisions in criminal matters, which we issued and debated here in the European Parliament in July 2000. The need for this specific instrument was identified in the programme of measures designed to apply the principle of the mutual recognition of decisions in criminal matters adopted by the Council and the Commission in November 2000. I wish to thank Mrs Morterero, in particular, for her excellent report.
As she quite rightly stated, there is no international instrument currently in place in all of our Member States for the application of financial penalties in criminal matters. There are only the two instruments to which the honourable Member referred, but one of them has never come into force and the other has only been ratified by five Member States. This means that what we are discussing today is the first European Union instrument in this field, which, I think, we also want to be ambitious. This instrument will implement the principle of mutual recognition through the application of cross-border financial penalties, thereby ensuring that there will be no safe havens in the Union for those who attempt to escape the application of financial penalties set by the competent authorities of the Member States. This instrument will strengthen the progress made in the implementation of the principle of mutual recognition by means of the Council’s approval of the Commission proposal on the European arrest order.
As Baroness Ludford has already said, the Commission is working on an initiative intended to identify the basic principles and criteria for the legal protection of European citizens’ fundamental rights in criminal matters. It is also worth pointing out, however, that we are not, in this field, working with a blank piece of paper: we are working within a legal framework which exists and which is – if I may say so – consolidated. All the Member States have signed up to and joined the European Convention on Human Rights, all the Member States have legal systems of criminal prosecution that are subject to the supervision of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and all the Member States have jointly proclaimed, in political though not legal terms, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. These are legal and political instruments that enable us to establish a frame of reference within which we can implement the principle of mutual recognition of final decisions in criminal matters.
The Commission broadly agrees with the approach adopted in all of the amendments tabled by the rapporteur. We understand the basis of the proposal on setting a minimum threshold of EUR 40 for the principle to be implemented because, in some cases, unless there is a minimum charge of EUR 40, the costs of transfer and implementation would not justify the execution of the judgment. I fully understand the criterion of EUR 40, which has been imported, shall we say, from the Schengen Agreement. I simply wish to point out that the wording should be sufficiently careful as not to give the idea that we are allowing the mere fact that a border has been crossed to be a way of escaping criminal liability, even if this is, in financial terms, quite limited.
Finally, I should like, once again, to thank Mrs Morterero for the positive and innovative spirit of her report and express my hopes that this will be adopted by the European Parliament."@en1
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