Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-13-Speech-1-095"
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"en.20030113.6.1-095"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to begin by thanking the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs and Mrs Joke Swiebel for this opportunity to discuss the situation of fundamental rights in the European Union in 2001 in plenary today.
The report that has been presented to you today is a document that is both vast and ambitious, because it attempts to provide an overview of the situation of fundamental rights in the European Union and its Member States and because it calls on the national authorities and the European institutions to adopt practical measures. By way of example, I might mention the need to pursue a consistent policy of combating discrimination – all forms of discrimination – and of promoting integration in European societies in order to prevent demonstrations of racism and xenophobia and to protect the rights that underpin European citizenship.
The European Parliament’s Annual Report on the situation of fundamental rights in the Union is an important instrument in terms of due regard being given to these rights, both at European level and at the level of every Member State, either within the current Union or in a Union of 25 Member States.
The Commission, for its part, has a direct interest in the report that Parliament will be voting on, since, as Mrs Swiebel has just stated, we are also required to adopt a set of practical actions. For my own part, I give a commitment carefully to study whatever recommendations Parliament wishes to make to us, and we shall, of course, adopt the appropriate measures to ensure that these are followed up. The Commission has always been equal to the challenges Parliament has set for it and I believe that we have together taken up these challenges in a positive way, in order to develop fruitful cooperation between the two institutions in this field.
An excellent example of this cooperation is surely the Commission’s creation, following Parliament’s resolution of July 2001, of a network of experts in the field of fundamental rights. In this resolution, based on Parliament’s report for the year 2000, drawn up by Mr Cornillet, Parliament clearly expressed its commitment to adopting a serious and practical approach to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, calling for an appropriate control instrument to be set in place and for an assessment to be made of the situation of fundamental rights, both at Member State and European Union level. The Commission, like Parliament, is convinced that being well-informed about the state of protection of fundamental rights is crucial to our being able to assess the quality of this protection, and this assessment must always be rigorous and efficient. This is the task of the Network of Experts on Fundamental Rights. This network will enable both Parliament and the Commission to remain vigilant and to ensure that the Charter of Fundamental Rights is complied with and given due consideration. We are of the opinion that the network must be allowed to work and to start publishing its findings before we move ahead with more complex institutional solutions, such as setting up a monitoring centre.
By the same token, this network will be obliged to provide Parliament and the Commission with information on the sensitive issue of the balance between security and freedom in the context of the fight against terrorism, an area that will receive particular attention in the report that is currently being drawn up as part of the network’s work. This network of experts in the field of fundamental rights became operational in October 2002, and the report that it is drafting must take account of changes in national law, the case law of the Luxembourg and Strasbourg courts and significant case law of the constitutional and other courts of the Member States. In this context, the importance of the role that Parliament and the Commission are called on to play has two strands: on the one hand, to have an even clearer view of the situation in the field of fundamental rights in the Member States in order to adopt the actions and decisions necessary in this area in a targeted and precise way by virtue of the powers conferred on the European institutions by the Treaties; and, on the other, to show Europe’s citizens that the protection of fundamental rights is more than just a political declaration; it is a real concern of the European institutions.
To this end, I should like to recall that placing fundamental rights at the heart of European integration means defending the thesis that the Convention on the Future of Europe and the subsequent Intergovernmental Conference must include the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Constitutional Treaty of the Union and give it binding legal force.
The European Union is an area of freedom, security and justice which fails to provide a rigorous protection of fundamental rights. Drafting a Treaty of a constitutional nature, an authentic European Constitution, of which the Charter of Fundamental Rights is an integral part, and which at the same time and in parallel authorises the European Union to sign up to the European Convention on Human Rights, is a major challenge facing us and one that we must overcome. At the same time, however, a pragmatic and effective assessment must be made of the quality of protection of fundamental rights. This report, the debate in this plenary and Parliament’s final resolution will certainly make a major contribution to the Commission’s actions over the next year in the field of fundamental rights."@en1
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