Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-05-Speech-3-166"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on the eve of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in London, the fight against terror must certainly remain the main objective of European security strategy and this is a good opportunity to remember it, together with the declaration, which should be loud and clear, that respect for the fundamental human rights of every human being is the other factor that should be included in European security strategy.
Finally I quote the reference in the report to the need to define new rules on non-commercial aviation, including by civil aircraft, with a definition of ‘State aircraft’ or ‘used for State business’. I can tell you now that, in this respect, the Commission is ready to discuss this with the temporary committee in the next work period, since finding a European definition, for example for ‘State aircraft’, could be a step forward in this area, which, as you know, is currently insufficiently covered by national legislation.
I therefore confirm my commitment to collaborating with the chairman and the members of the temporary committee. Thank you.
It is obvious that, when we erode guarantees of freedom and people’s fundamental rights, we involuntarily risk providing a propaganda target for the very terrorists that we are combating. The search for truth is therefore necessary, and, I have to say, it involves a historical truth, a legal truth and a search for liability, and naturally the Commission has made and will continue to make a heartfelt contribution to it.
From the very beginning, the European Commission has made its contribution with conviction, a fact that I believe the committee chairman, Mr Coelho, can corroborate. It assisted and vigorously supported the request from the temporary committee to obtain the Eurocontrol data, which, as emerges from the report, have provided some of the most important evidence for identifying certain facts.
I also strongly supported requests from the temporary Parliamentary committee for access to European Agency satellite photos. Together with colleagues from the Council, we worked to ensure that the request was dealt with rapidly and I think that this was a useful contribution to the first phase of the temporary committee’s work.
Furthermore, I have tried three times to impress on the Ministers of Home Affairs in the Member States the importance of collaborating with the European Parliament temporary committee and with the Council of Europe, in other words of ensuring that enquiries and national checks make progress in countries where this has not yet happened. I can tell you in advance that at the next Council of Ministers on 24 July, the first to be held under the Finnish Presidency, I will repeat my invitation to the Ministers of Home Affairs in the 25 Member States to continue to collaborate with the temporary Parliamentary committee.
I acknowledge and agree that the European Parliament temporary committee does not claim to be a sort of ‘European super-court’ and this is a very important factor in identifying institutional responsibilities. However, I maintain that the items indicated in the report are useful tools that must be assessed in detail. Some elements have already been assessed because they were already available to the many national judicial authorities involved in enquiries, some of them highly detailed, that started a long time ago.
I think that now, in the light of the data contained in this report, national authorities can and must proceed to such checks with greater conviction, including in cases in which they have not yet been carried out; that they must do so with full guarantees of due process, which are in fact the guarantees of the rule of law, full rights for victims, to whom you too have listened to some extent, and for those accused, and to provide proof of the events, until a judgment determines when and if there is liability for specific events.
This is the result that, I am sure, we all hope for: to find out at last the full and satisfactory truth on these charges. I think that it is important that we await the decisions to be taken by judges in the Member States with confidence.
I would like to express a final thought on future prospects, which seem to me to be just as interesting. I want to reflect on the reform of the so-called secret services, a reform that comes under national competences, but which I think could benefit from broader debate. We could, for example, reflect on whether the rules of transparency, in terms of relations with Parliament’s bodies, can be improved at national level; whether the coordination of the activity of the services in each Member State should, as I believe it should, provide for more direct responsibility on the part of the heads of government of the respective countries; whether there should be some sort of national parliamentary control over the financial resources of the secret services – since everyone knows that where there is control of financial resources, one can have a significant effect on operating activity."@en1
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