Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-31-Speech-4-014"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I welcome the President of the Council and thank the Chairman of the Committee, Mr Deprez, for his introduction.
I believe that the best working method is the one we have begun to explore with the Council: not working in six-month periods, but bringing together the trio of Presidencies, which the current and previous Presidencies have done, to look at initiatives over an eighteen-month period rather than a six-month period, because it is clearly the case that if we work only with initiatives over a limited timescale, we do not have the vision that should carry us – I believe – reasonably, at least to June 2009, because the date of the European Parliament elections is, in my opinion, the only real deadline we should be looking at.
So I am prepared to do this, I am prepared for a political dialogue with the Council and with Parliament to identify those things we can offer our citizens as an immediate response from among the 2008 and 2009 priorities, and those that deserve to be looked into in more detail. This is how I believe we will demonstrate, without prejudice to the Treaty, that when the institutions work together they get there more quickly and with better political results. This is the path I think we could all follow together.
Clearly today we are not just discussing an assessment of the results for 2007, which in our particular area have been positive, in my opinion: we have opened up internal borders to more than 400 million EU citizens with Schengen enlargement; we have created and implemented the Fundamental Rights Agency; we have reached a very important agreement with Parliament on the Visa Information System; we have worked on immigration, as the Slovenian Minister Mr Mate mentioned, and on terrorism.
Just to give a statistic, in 2007 the proposals that fell within my remit and that I presented to you constituted almost 20% of all the strategic initiatives of the European Commission, which means that this area has been and continues to be of truly vast importance. We have achieved everything that was in the strategic programme.
Today, in 2008, we are facing a challenge every bit as important. As you know, the Commission identified 26 strategic proposals for 2008, and eight of these, so almost 30%, concern the area of freedom, security and justice.
This year we will deal with external borders: there will be a package of proposals in February to strengthen security at our external borders, along the same lines and using the same criteria as for the Schengen and visa information systems; we will carry out a comprehensive assessment of Frontex, which will enable everyone to learn lessons for the future too; we will, I hope, make some progressive and ambitious proposals on civil justice; we are discussing with the Slovenian Presidency what is known as e-justice, or how to give citizens better access to civil and criminal justice through the use of the latest technologies.
Of course we will continue to deal with immigration. The initiatives of last year, on which a broad political consensus was reached, will be dealt with and developed during this year. This year there will be the action plan on asylum, asylum seekers and the European system for the treatment of refugees; in July and November we will have the two comprehensive proposals.
We will be proposing a European strategy for the prevention of violent radicalisation, one of the key factors of a political strategy to fight terrorism; this will happen in June.
However, I think the political issue raised by Mr Deprez deserves a political response, which I will happily give. 2008 is a year of transition. It is a year of transition to the Treaty of Lisbon and its ratification, with a view to its entry into force – which we would all like – in January 2009. Then it is clear that the three requirements, on the one hand to work together with Parliament to assist this transition, and on the other not to slow down initiatives that are ready for action and on which there is consensus, and at the same time not to anticipate what the Treaty of Lisbon will say or do when it comes into force, must all be kept in mind. So I believe that an interinstitutional political agreement will be necessary.
Clearly, this can be reached only if the Council, Commission and Parliament agree on the working method, even before agreeing on the specific priorities. If there is political agreement on the working method, we can define common priorities together, and the priorities should be initiatives that have an immediate added value for citizens, that attract sufficient consensus, and that achieve the balance we want between the interests at play: security, safeguarding the security of citizens, and also promoting and protecting civil liberties – the usual political balancing act that is the challenge facing all of us."@en1
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