Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-14-Speech-2-272"
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"Mr President, this takes us to another very delicate area. There has, of course, been a Proposal for a framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia from the Commission, which was presented on 29 November 2001. Despite intensive discussions in the Council, it did not prove possible to reach agreement on this proposal in February 2003.
Following on from this, the Italian delegation presented an alternative version of the Proposal for a framework decision in March 2003, but this, too, failed to meet with agreement from the delegations. Subsequently, on 24 February 2005, the Council instructed its working party on substantive criminal law to continue the discussions on the proposal. Accordingly, the working party resumed the work on the proposal, based on the state of affairs reached in 2003. The debate on this framework decision at the Council meeting on 2 and 3 June 2005 made it clear that there is no scope for consensus among Member States. Naturally, this was a bitter pill to swallow, especially for those Member States who have given this framework decision their strong support.
In view of the past history of this framework decision, which I have just described to you, a resumption of negotiations does not strike the Austrian Presidency as promising at the present time. Nevertheless, the Presidency does not want to let this very important dossier – and especially the political message behind it – come to a complete standstill, and so we shall be holding a seminar on this subject, also in agreement with the Commission and the European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia, before the end of our Presidency. We expect there to be about 100 participants in this seminar. The seminar will take place in Vienna from 20–22 June 2006 and will discuss selected problems connected with this proposal.
As I am sure you can imagine – indeed, this also emerged from the recent discussions on the caricatures – we find ourselves once more in the midst of the area of tension between our political message – that we unambiguously oppose racism and xenophobia – and freedom of expression. It is this very tension that we have to defuse if we are to really make important progress. These are also exactly the kind of issues that are to be discussed at the seminar.
It is intended that two representatives of each of the Member States, acceding countries and candidate countries participate in this seminar. We also intend to invite NGOs, in particular, who are familiar with the issues, and also representatives of the Council of Europe, of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, of the EU network of independent experts in fundamental rights, and of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. It goes without saying that representatives of Parliament will also be invited to participate. Parliament will receive an official invitation to this seminar in late March. The programme will also have been finalised by then, and we shall be able to present it.
In addition, as already mentioned in connection with Question No 4 on the protection of fundamental rights, I should like to point out that the European Council decided in December 2003 to establish a European Fundamental Rights Agency, a fact it confirmed in December 2004. The Council’s ad hoc working party on fundamental rights and citizenship is currently examining the proposal for a regulation presented by the Commission in June 2005. The Agency is scheduled to start work on 1 January 2007. We know that this is a very tight schedule, but we hope to be able to keep to it.
The Austrian Presidency attaches the highest priority to this issue and hopes to be able to conclude the negotiations so that the Agency can start work on schedule."@en1
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