Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-06-Speech-4-011"
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"en.20010906.2.4-011"2
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"Mr President, this week we have been debating very many important issues: the enlargement of the Union, the future governance of the Union and anti-terrorism measures amongst others. I do not want anybody to think that the issues addressed in the joint debate this morning are not themselves of the utmost importance.
The European Union is a great ideal. The institutions are undoubtedly worthy and officials of the institutions seek to discharge their functions responsibly. As the Ombudsman himself said this morning, unfortunately the institutions of Europe do not enjoy the highest reputation amongst our citizens. It is critical, therefore, that every step is taken to ensure the quality of the administration of European affairs by the EU institutions. In Parliament we have the Petitions Committee and the Officer of the Ombudsman to oversee allegations of maladministration. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Herbert Bösch in his report on the Ombudsman, my colleague on the later report, Felipe Camisón on the work of the Petitions Committee and Mrs Almeida Garrett on her work on the Statute of the Ombudsman. We need a new framework agreement so that the Member States also pay more serious attention to their obligations under the EU Treaties. We should also place on record our appreciation to the Ombudsman and to his staff for the calm and efficient way in which they discharge their functions. It cannot be easy to be the complaints department of Europe. It requires special skills and Mr Söderman has shown us that he has those in abundance.
To turn to my own report proposing a code of good administrative behaviour, this has been a long time in the gestation and in the last Parliament there were reports from myself and from Mrs de Esteban proposing a code of good administrative behaviour. I am grateful to rapporteurs from the Citizens' Rights Committee and the Legal Affairs Committee, in particular Mr Dehousse, who have pointed to a procedural route that could, and will I hope, enable us to get this code. There are two central principles if the code is to be fully effective. One, it must be based in law. Good administration is a right, not a privilege and the code must be uniform for all the institutions. Citizens need to know where they stand and precisely what their rights are in dealing with the institutions. The right to good administration is enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. But without this code, the charter would just be a form of words. This code is to put flesh on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It is a concept that is contained within similar laws in most of the Member States. Spain, is just one example. Its 1992 administrative law requires that citizens be treated with respect and cooperation by the authorities. Germany and its unfair practice law dating from 1909 enforces good practice upon its officials. The European Union must now follow suit with its own code of good administrative behaviour.
I appreciate that the Commission in particular, but also the other institutions, have adopted and are applying their own voluntary codes. They are good as far as they go, but they do not go far enough, and they have to be obligatory rather than voluntary. There are, however, some differences between the proposed code as now drafted by the Ombudsman, which I hope that this House will support, and the codes currently in use. I would refer just to one of them and that is the requirement that when an error has been made the official concerned has to apologise to the citizen who has suffered as a result. A readiness to apologise never comes amiss, so I particularly support that particular clause in the draft.
In conclusion, British Members like me are often against written constitutions. They are alien to our tradition. They seem to us very often to concentrate on giving power to those in authority and ignoring the rights of the citizen. But from the Magna Carta 1215 to our citizens' charter of the 1990s, we in Britain have welcomed codes that set out citizens' rights. I hope that fellow Europeans will see this as a contribution to the good governance of Europe that even British Members can support."@en1
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