Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-09-10-Speech-1-101-000"
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"en.20120910.23.1-101-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Vice-President Reding, your predecessor, Mr Frattini, declared in this House in February 2007 that, and I quote, ‘security cannot be at any price’. I could not agree more, just as I can only agree with what you said in your speech today, when you spoke about the values of the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a fair trial before an independent tribunal. All of this has been denied to those detained in Guantánamo, the closure of which has been promised, but has not been implemented.
We would draw attention to the importance of international law and the need for the uncompromising defence of human rights. In the report we adopted on 14 February 2007, following the committee which I chaired, we evaluated the facts, identified misconduct, pointed out omissions and proposed more than 40 recommendations aimed at preventing the same things from happening again, or at least preventing them from happening with such ease.
The question that must be asked today is: what will happen if the same things happen again now? What measures have we actually taken to ensure that history will not repeat itself? As I see it, in essence, nothing has been done. There is certainly greater public opinion on this matter, so that parliaments would not refrain from becoming more involved than they did in the past, while the judicial authorities in certain Member States would be more vigilant and would react more rapidly. However, most of the European institutions and the governments of the Member States have done nothing to comply with our recommendations.
I welcome the work of Ms Flautre and the excellent report that she has put before us. I agree with most of its recommendations and would like to emphasise that state secrets may be an exceptional form of defence used by democracies, but they cannot constitute a pretext for hiding the arbitration and violation of human rights. However, I would repeat the question: are we better placed today to assure our fellow citizens that the same thing cannot happen again, or at least that it cannot be repeated with impunity? I believe that we have to carry out rigorous work in close collaboration with the national parliaments in order to identify what is being done with regard to each of the recommendations that we adopted. I am even willing to accept that some of the recommendations may be difficult or controversial to apply, but I wish to understand why they have been overwhelmingly ignored by the governments of the Member States and the EU institutions up until now."@en1
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