Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-04-Speech-3-266"
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"en.20020904.8.3-266"2
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"Mr President, I congratulate Mr Coelho on a very strong report, which is concrete and specific. He makes it clear that European citizenship not only supplements and complements national citizenship but also that the concept should adapt to include the rights of long-term resident foreign nationals.
I would just take issue with him on one point. In 2004, elections to the Greater London Authority are due to take place one month before the European elections. I hope agreement will be reached to postpone them for one month so that they take place on the same day, which will help raise turnout and make a legitimate connection, in the sense of a Europe of the regions. Mr Coelho adopts a fully justified tone of impatience. The rights of people must not continue to lag behind the rights of goods.
In several areas I fully support him: openness, transparency, freedom of information. In the EU we are still depressingly opaque and inaccessible. Information documents must become more available.
Secondly, of course our citizens want protection against crime and terrorism, but there is a very poor level of democratic scrutiny in the area of police and judicial cooperation. We must improve this situation. Also, measures to combat crime and terrorism must have due regard to respect for human rights, including the right to a fair trial.
The rapporteur stresses elimination of discrimination, on which I fully support him, but I would also add that respect for cultural traditions must not be at the expense of fundamental human rights.
Lastly, life is too much of a hassle for people when they try to exercise their European rights, whether it be residence permits, family reunions, social security or access to justice. I have a constituent – and I have brought this to the attention of the Commissioner – against whom proceedings were brought in the civil courts in the UK and whose case was thrown out by the English High Court. Proceedings were then brought against her on the basis of exactly the same facts by the criminal courts in Spain and she suffered years of worry and expense, until the case was finally thrown out just a month or so ago. Why is there not mutual recognition of the same facts between a civil and a criminal case?
My conclusion is that we need to reinforce our monitoring of the implementation of citizenship and human rights standards. We must take the opportunity of transforming a process which is currently being applied to the candidate countries into a genuine European Union peer review process, so that the standards of citizenship and human rights applied in each of our Member States is the concern of all of us on a cross-national basis."@en1
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