Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-07-Speech-2-016"
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"en.20050607.5.2-016"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr de Vries, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Duquesne has already given a detailed explanation of the need for action to curb, combat and prevent terrorism in Europe and throughout the world.
In the context of the reports on the table, and particularly the one for which I am responsible, the report on the retention of data, I should like to remind the House of what the European Court of Justice has said with regard to the war on terrorism, namely that governments must constantly consider whether all the resources they deploy and all the measures they enact, however legitimate they may be, are not actually endangering what they are intended to protect. In some cases, this may be the existence of a free society; in others it may be the right of personal privacy.
I heartily agree with the shadow rapporteurs, and I should like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to them, that we are not fundamentally opposed to the proposals made by the governments of the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Sweden. We would certainly insist, however, that measures involving significant curtailments of fundamental rights, which – as all law students learn in the first term at every European university – must always be properly justified, are based on a needs assessment which endorses the measures in question. This assessment should not be confined to identifying the need for action but should also outline the benefits of retaining, as a matter of course, data from public telecommunications networks – the Internet, landlines, mobile phones and SMS – which could relate to any of 450 million people.
The main problem I should like to re-examine in this context is that of the procedural method. I am grateful for the communication we have received. With the best will in the world, however, I have to say that the procedure leaves a great deal of scope for improvement. The report on which you will vote today is based on a draft dating from April of last year. In the meantime, the Council’s proposal has undergone several amendments. The most recent proposal dates from 24 May. Since then the Commission has taken the initiative to introduce its own proposals. Since Parliament is not up to date on these, not having been involved in the latest discussions to the extent of receiving a new document through official channels, we can scarcely be expected to express unbounded enthusiasm about the cooperation of the other institutions in this matter. Perhaps some thought should be given to ways of improving interinstitutional cooperation if we want to succeed in combating terrorism.
To deal briefly with the report itself, in the old version – and similar problems may well exist in the new version too – we identified technical defects with regard to the means of enforcement. It is a matter of creating databases designed to store as much data as it is possible and necessary to retain; it is a matter of ascertaining how easily ways can be found to circumvent the provisions contained in the present proposal and how easy or difficult it may and must be for the relevant industry to effect the requisite structural changes – and this is the economic crux of the matter – without the need for compensation. Perhaps some of the new proposals set out different rules on this last point, but there was certainly no provision for compensation in the version on which we had to base our deliberations.
The other question we had to examine was a legal one: to what extent is the proposed system compatible with the right to respect for private and family life as defined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights? To what extent is it compatible with the fundamental rights enshrined in our national constitutions, such as the right to determine the disclosure and use of one’s own personal data, as in Germany, and the right of telephone privacy, which presumably exists in every Member State, to store the data of all European citizens? In which country will the framework decision first be declared unconstitutional, if it is adopted at all?
Another aspect is the political message conveyed in the justification of the first document, which states that the system should be deliberately designed to include those who have never come under suspicion so that it can achieve the goal of combating terrorism and organised crime as comprehensively and efficiently as possible. Perhaps an alternative solution could be sought among the other available options. We have the Convention on Cybercrime, which proposes ways of striking a reasonable balance between the storage and protection of data, such as the use of a data freeze or a system of data preservation. This Convention proposes several solutions that have not yet been implemented in a single country. At this point one begins to wonder whether the desire to take rapid action did not triumph over rational reflection in this case, particularly in view of the fact that the Council received its mandate on 25 March of last year, exactly two weeks after the dreadful atrocities in Madrid.
I hope that the message we are sending out from here will be properly interpreted. We are willing to cooperate, but we also want the right procedure to be chosen. As the report shows, we believe, and the legal services believe, that this matter should be part of the first pillar of the EU Treaty, in other words one of the areas in which our Parliament engages in joint decision-making and is not merely consulted. Perhaps that can be taken on board, and perhaps we shall then be accorded the same level of respect that we give the other institutions in the course of our work."@en1
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