Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-06-Speech-3-355"
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"en.20090506.39.3-355"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, as Mr Zwiefka just said, we are simultaneously discussing two reports which have different scopes, but which form part of the same logic and are subject to identical procedures.
The first, for which Mr Zwiefka is the rapporteur – and I wish to thank him for the courtesy he has shown me and for his patience when faced with some of my demands –relates to a proposal for a regulation under the codecision procedure. The second, for which I am the rapporteur, involves a proposal for a regulation that merely provides for consultation of the European Parliament.
In essence, Mr President – and I agree on this – the problems that we are trying to solve with these two instruments are serious and very often really tragic. Each of us has heard of or knows cases where a marriage with a person from a third country has failed and where the father or more often the mother no longer has the right to see the children, who have been taken by the spouse to his or her country of origin or elsewhere, and sometimes is unable to discover their whereabouts. The same goes for the possibility of receiving maintenance payments.
Clearly, these issues are real, serious and tragic. There is an urgent, legitimate need to attempt to find a solution to this, in particular by negotiating agreements with third countries.
What, though, is the origin of the issue that we are concerned with today? Why is it that the European institutions have to deal with this problem? The answer is simple. For all of these matters, the negotiation and conclusion of agreements with one or more third countries falls within the exclusive competence of the Community. The exclusively Community nature of these matters is explicitly confirmed by rulings from the Court of Justice and the opinions of the legal services. This means that what appeared to be very simple is, in fact, a little more complicated and more sensitive. So the question now is this: is it legally possible, given the current state of the Treaties and the case-law of the Court, to allow the Member States to exercise one of the Community’s exclusive competences and, if so, under what conditions?
Personally, Mr President, I am not a great legal expert. I am not a legal expert at all, but I have not found a legal basis in the current Treaties that would explicitly authorise the Community wholly or partially to surrender its exclusive competences for the benefit of the Member States. This means that I, for my part, remain very puzzled and very doubtful as to the very principle of the mechanism that is proposed to us.
Having said that, I must admit that the opinions of our institutions’ legal services have opened some doors. That is very clear. For example, Commissioner, the opinion of your institution’s legal service, and I quote: ‘agrees that the exercise of external Community competence by the Member States is legally possible in exceptional circumstances and under specific conditions, both in form and in substance’. The European Parliament’s legal service is much less explicit, although it did offer some possibilities.
It is these very precise and restrictive legal principles that formed the basis of the amendments I tabled, and of the negotiations in which I took part, which were held in trialogue with the Council and the Commission. I am, I repeat, very aware of the tragedies suffered by some of our fellow citizens and I am determined to make great efforts to help them. That is why, in the end, I agreed to the compromise negotiated with the Council and the Commission, but I wish to make it very clear, Mr President, Commissioner, that the Community’s exclusive competence must remain as such. The Member States must not, by granting countless derogations and broadening the scope, end up reclaiming what is an exclusive Community competence. That is the line that I have taken and, in the future, that is the line that I will defend."@en1
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