Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20050907.2.3-015"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank the President-in-Office, Mr Clarke, and Commissioner Frattini for their speeches today. I would also like to have put on the record of this House my absolute horror and condemnation of all terrorist acts, speaking as somebody who comes from the island of Ireland and who understands the effects and impact of terrorism, the way that it can undermine not only that very basic human right, the right to life, but can also undermine the power of the State, the power of the institutions and the right of good and free-thinking people to undertake opposition to political movements and go about their daily lives.
We can all point to individual examples and different times when terrorist acts have so horrified us that we have wanted to respond according to the old biblical rule of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. We have been very lucky in a lot of ways in that, at those times of crisis, many of our leaders have been able to stay calm and wait for the intelligence information to come through before responding to the threat.
In this debate today, we must likewise remain calm and not give in to the narrow jingoism that some people encourage, but rather focus on creating a better European Union, that European Union which is made up of a Europe of nation states, where those nation states with their own democratically-elected governments determine and decide what they will cooperate in, what they will do and whether they will have laws, directives, framework agreements or merely bilateral agreements. That is the essence of the way democratic control should work in the area of liberty and security.
Because, when we look through the history books of the 20th century and of the 21st century, terrorism and its impact – and the human devastation it causes – are as great today as at the start of the 20th century. But, likewise, the same mistakes that were made by governments at the start of the 20th century seem to be repeated today at the start of the 21st century.
When we hear talk about utilising jurisprudence in the work that is being done with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights and building on that, of course we should all be heartened to hear that our laws and our policies will be guided by those principles. But at the same time, the actions that we see after those words sometimes appear to undermine those very basic core tenets contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. Too often when we bring in special laws and new laws in response to these kinds of emergencies or situations, they stay on our books after the emergency has passed and can be utilised again and again.
Of course we must have cooperation. Of course we must give the tools to our security services to ensure that they are able not only to prevent terrorism, but also to capture the perpetrators of terrorism, those who finance terrorism and those who are involved in other forms of criminality, whether it be drug-trafficking, money-laundering or people-trafficking. We have seen the horrors of people dying inside container trucks in ports around Europe. We have seen the horrors of people dying in boats trying to come into Europe because of the abuse of their human rights by people-traffickers. Let me hasten to add that I am not one of those people who say that all governments are wrong and all opposition groups or all non-governmental groups are right. There is a balance to be struck between the rights of the individual and the rights of the common good.
We must become the heralds of a new world, a world that recognises those fundamental and basic rights of freedom, the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to security. With all of those rights comes a responsibility. We enter into a social contract with our governments. We abdicate some of our own individual rights and freedoms in the interests of the common good to make sure that our world, our countries, our towns are better and safer places. But, in giving away those individual rights and freedoms, we also expect the same responsibility on the part of those in power. We expect the same responsibility on the part of those who run our security forces not to abuse that right and not to abuse the tasks that we have given them. The common good that the authority of the State serves is only as strong as the certainty in the minds of its citizens that their rights are protected and their responsibilities are clear."@en1
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