Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-09-Speech-2-272"
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"Madam President, I would like to discuss two very specific matters that have been mentioned: one by Mr Salafranca and another by Mr Scholz.
I believe that this is something that needs to be pointed out. In order to achieve it, we do, of course, need to cooperate, and Mrs Muñiz de Urquiza referred to this very explicitly: to cooperating with the United States. Europe has criticised the prison on many occasions, and Europe needs to cooperate as far as possible, although there are two types of limitation. There is one that affects the United States, which is that ultimately, it is United States legislation and United States sovereignty that is being applied. The other is that the Member States of the European Union also sovereignly decide whether to accept prisoners from Guantánamo.
Of course the Presidency-in-Office of the Council is clearly in favour of cooperation and of encouraging cooperation, while respecting the right to security of every country and every citizen, which is therefore another principle that needs to be taken into account. Therefore, as Mrs Gomes said, we need to promote cooperation between the United States and the European Union, but also cooperation between the Member States of the Union.
We need to cooperate among ourselves on this, we need to have dialogue among ourselves, and part of this dialogue needs to go even further than the specific subject of Guantánamo. This matter has been mentioned in some of the speeches, for example, by Mrs Hautala and Mr Czarnecki: the subject of victims. I think that this is one of the areas of dialogue that we should implement in our relations with the United States. I think that this dialogue regarding the victims of the various terrorist crimes is a matter that needs to be dealt with in the future, but in any case, there is an in-depth dialogue ongoing with the United States on this issue.
I would like to finish by saying that the European Union has a very clear position regarding the issue of Guantánamo in favour of the closure of the prison. The European Union has a very clear position that human rights and fundamental freedoms should not be violated on any grounds, and, of course, in favour of the fight against terrorism and the need to work together with the United States. This is a credible position, given that there has undeniably been a radical change, an obvious radical change from the past, in terms of the counter-terrorism policy of the United States and of President Obama and in terms of a whole series of policies relating to detention, transfer and interrogation. This is the position that we need to strengthen and help to consolidate. The Council’s position is therefore one of clear cooperation with the United States in order to achieve what we all want, which is the permanent closure of the Guantánamo prison.
The first matter is Yemen. With regard to Yemen, I do not have any evidence that a specific decision has been made or is to be made connecting Yemen with prisoners that come from there and are in Guantánamo. The situation in Yemen was the subject of conclusions of the first Foreign Affairs Council meeting in the history of the Union. There has only been one ordinary Foreign Affairs Council meeting, on 25 January, and there was a conclusion inviting Yemen to conduct a programme of major political reforms, but no reference was made to the issue of Guantánamo. We do, of course, support these conclusions, as well as the conference that was held in London on 27 January.
With regard to an allusion made by Mr Scholz to the Guantánamo Bay situation and the possibility of its territorial status being changed, this is an issue that arises from the international treaty of 1903 between the United States and Cuba. Therefore, it is an entirely bilateral issue between Cuba and the United States.
I believe that there is a general agreement that the Guantánamo prison constitutes a series of serious human rights violations and legal aberrations that cannot be tolerated, that we do not want repeated, and that the European Union has severely criticised. It is for this very reason that we want to work with the President of the United States, who decided to put an end to Guantánamo and to close the prison. Not only this, but he also decided that there would be a review of United States prison policy.
There are therefore strong grounds for Mr Vajgl’s comments about the intrinsic need to close this prison due to massive human rights violations, and for other comments that have been made. Moreover, I believe, in any case, that the fact that human rights violations take place in other countries of the world or in Europe does not mean that this situation should not be criticised or that we should not work to ensure that it does not happen again. I am saying this in relation to the speech by Mr Nattrass, because I am of course sure that he agrees that there is nothing in Europe similar to the Guantánamo prison.
The European Union and the United States have worked very thoroughly on this issue. I have mentioned the declaration made on 15 June last year in which the United States and the European Union committed to working for the consolidation of human rights and the fight against terrorism. This concerns the human rights violated in the Guantánamo prison, but also the need for the fight against terrorism to be conducted with absolute respect for freedoms, fundamental rights and legality. It is important for us to be in line with this. I therefore completely agree with what Mr Coelho said about the importance of the European Union contributing to this.
However, we are not only talking about the decision by the United States to close Guantánamo, with all the problems that brings, which I discussed in my first speech. It also has to be recognised that President Obama is genuinely breaking with the past. This means turning over a new leaf, not only with Guantánamo, but with all of the practices that have surrounded it. I think that this is very clear when we look at the measures that President Obama has adopted.
He has put an end to the secret detentions by the CIA, and has ordered that from now on, all United States prisoners be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross. He has put an end to the ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques, also by the CIA. This means that US investigators can no longer use legal opinions on torture and interrogation techniques that arose after 11 September as justification, which of course means turning over a new leaf. There has also been a re-examination of transfer policy to ensure that it is in line with international law.
This is something that we welcome, and we said so in the joint declaration. We welcome the fact that there has been a thorough review of United States policy on detention, transfer, trial, interrogation and the fight against terrorism. We therefore said explicitly in the declaration that we noted the commitment by the United States to reconsider all the issues surrounding security, and to comprehensively review the policies undertaken, thanks to the order signed by President Obama on 22 January 2009."@en1
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