Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-14-Speech-3-010"
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"en.20070214.2.3-010"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, right from the start of our work in this committee a year ago, we have tried to improve the report that is before us and to make it more balanced, more useful and more consensual. Today we have to admit that we have not succeeded. We started off on the wrong foot right at the outset: on our first visit to Washington, we presented ourselves in the State Department like a prosecuting court – I am sorry to disillusion you, Mr Frattini. Thus any dialogue that would have helped us achieve our purpose was made difficult from the very start.
After our visit to London, the UK Minister for Europe wrote to his European counterparts advising them against meeting us. Although we had given up any hope of improving this report, we did make a last-ditch attempt at our meeting yesterday, when we highlighted some key points in our amendments which, if not accepted, would mean that our group as a whole would vote against the report. The rapporteur has already indicated, unless he wants to change his mind, that he will not accept our key amendments, and so everything suggests that we shall be voting against it.
If I may take off my coordinator’s hat for a moment and speak on my own behalf, I have to admit that many members of our group would vote against it even if these amendments were accepted. I personally could only vote for it if two amendments that I have tabled were adopted, as they seem to me perfectly simple, linear and acceptable. The first one states that the secret services are so called because they are secret and they must be allowed to work in secret, so long as they do not break the law. The second states that the CIA can fly whenever and however it wishes, so long as it does not break the law. If these amendments are adopted, I shall also be inclined to vote in favour. The rapporteur has rejected them. I believe that refusing to accept these amendments means that the intention behind this report is not only to identify, accuse and punish the culprits, but also to condemn the secret services as such to inefficiency by subjecting them to full accountability and exposing them to every external threat possible.
That is why we do not like this report. We do not like it because it is useless. Mr Fava has said that I maintain that there is nothing new in the report. That is true: I do maintain that, and I am not the only one to do so. Someone else who thinks so is Senator Dick Marty, who was a great ally and supporter of his and was welcomed in our committee as a hero and leader. Today, however, now that your report has been finalised, Mr Fava, Dick Marty says that the document contains nothing new at all and that we have just copied what he had done previously; he says he is disappointed with the report, and the only difference compared with his one is that the document that has you as the rapporteur, Mr Fava, was drawn up by 46 Members and 13 full-time staff, whereas Dick Marty achieved the same result working alone.
Having said that, Mr President, I should like to finish by emphasising that I agree with Mr Frattini: we certainly need to try to uphold human rights even in the context of the fight against terrorism. In this case, however, a document like this one is of no use, since it has already established
that there is an indisputable violator of human rights, in other words the United States, and only lines of enquiry in support of this idea are pursued."@en1
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