Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-11-Speech-3-019"
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"en.20040211.1.3-019"2
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"Mr President, for anyone who has worked with legal issues in their professional life, the subject of this debate is very challenging. The Treaty’s ideological ambition, namely that of establishing an area of freedom, security and justice, is, of course, all but divine. ‘And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.’
The EU’s ideologues have, for a good many years, tried to imitate the divine creator. ‘Let there be law’, the programme goes. The results reveal, however, a regrettable difference between divine and technocratic power. The work done by the EU technocrats over a period of years, aimed at realising the ideology of freedom, security and justice, has proved to bear a striking resemblance to the Tower of Babel. The observable and demonstrable results fall into two categories: firstly, the undermining of efficient national legal systems and, secondly, the establishment of an opaque supranational legal system with attendant supranational bodies that are beyond supervision. Together, these two categories of results involve huge reductions in legal certainty and, if this development continues, the criterion of success we shall be able, in a few years’ time, to use in characterising the EU project will be the blackly humorous one found in the saying, ‘The operation was a success, but the patient died.’
In order to promote justice, monitoring systems have been established that leave the parties involved beyond all supervision. That is something of which anyone who has tried to work with the Schengen information systems, Europol registers etc is aware. The degree of legal certainty is accurately reflected in the scope of police power and the opportunities to exercise democratic control over such power. These opportunities are being reduced day by day. Fortress Europe involves neither freedom, nor security nor justice.
The EU’s ideologues overlook two basic facts in the sociology of law: firstly, that viable and democratic legal systems require something other, and more, than ideological phrases, legislative agreements and technological implementation; and, secondly, that the objectives pursued should be realised through the least far-reaching means.
The Commission’s comprehensive monitoring report, published in November 2003, offers an ironic warning, observing as it does that the level of corruption is still high, indeed very high, and that this may have repercussions for people’s confidence in public administration and the judicial system. You bet! What, then, is the cure? It is that the Commission should exercise special vigilance. With the Eurostat affair fresh in the memory, that is no doubt like setting the fox to keep the geese."@en1
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