Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-23-Speech-1-104"
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"en.20091123.18.1-104"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to speak about the European Crime Prevention Network.
The proposal envisages that the network should be composed of a secretariat, of contact points designated by each Member State and of a board of directors. This board of directors should be made up of national representatives appointed by Member States and would be presided over by a chairman in charge of an executive committee.
I think there is also some confusion in this respect between contact points and national representatives. Civil society, the academic world, the world of experience and hence, of experts, are all being completely left out of the network. This is a very serious matter. The structural links between the network and the other Community institutions and bodies that are concerned with crime and its prevention have been completely cut off.
The Decision does not envisage any form of cooperation with the European Parliament and the requirement for knowledge of languages has been omitted, despite having been requested previously.
Speaking as rapporteur, I believe that this proposal is completely ineffective and is incapable of tackling crime prevention for several reasons. First, it has been unable to fulfil the objectives for which it was created; second, there has been no cooperation between the Commission, the Council and Member States, and I believe that this must be regarded as a sort of sabotage of the network itself.
Crime prevention cannot be reduced to the exchange of best practices. Unfortunately, we have witnessed what is almost a type of tourism on the part of various officials who have visited various countries and have often not even managed to speak to one another because there were no interpreters. The failure to involve civil society and NGOs, or to develop materials on prevention such as books for schools, makes this network completely ineffective. To make the network function, I think we should strengthen its powers, and also incorporate the fight against crime and the prevention of organised crime.
I therefore suggest that we reject this proposal, which could have been accepted only if the Council had presented a genuinely ambitious proposal. Unfortunately, this has not happened.
This network was set up in 2001 by Council Decision 2001/427/JHA. Its objectives were to facilitate cooperation and exchanges of information and experiences at national and European level; to collect and analyse relevant information aimed in particular at the exchange of best practices; to organise conferences, seminars, meetings and initiatives with the objective of facilitating the exchange of experiences and best practices; and to provide its expertise to the Council and the Commission concerning crime prevention.
The Decision envisaged that the structure would be based on contact points designated by the Commission and the Member States; these contact points were to include at least one representative from the national authorities, while the other designated contact points could be researchers or university academics specialising in this field. Member States were, in any case, required to involve researchers, university academics, NGOs and civil society. Even Europol and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction were involved in the work as expert bodies.
In 2005, the network underwent its first internal structural reform. This foresaw the permanent establishment of two commissions – one for the work programme and one for research – while the running of the website was transferred from the European Commission to the United Kingdom, which still keeps it updated.
In 2007, there was another review, which acknowledged the particular need to strengthen the secretariat and highlighted the need to confront the problem of resources for the permanent commissions and the national representatives.
In March 2009, an external evaluation was published concerning the functioning of the network. This focused on the importance of the objectives that brought the network into being but, at the same time, regrettably highlighted the organisational failure that had impeded the achievement of the important objectives that we were speaking of earlier.
The problems thus brought to light, which have led to the virtual collapse of the network, included the lack of suitable resources, an ineffective secretariat, lack of commitment on the part of the national representatives and a very poor work programme.
The evaluation also considered the possibility of disbanding the network. In consequence, the network appointed a working group to examine the recommendations made in March 2009 and took the view that certain amendments needed to be made to the Act that created the network. In particular, it was suggested that there should be an external secretariat financed with funds from Community programmes.
Although some Member States had revived the idea of disbanding the network, others suggested that it should be reformed. The Swedish Presidency of the European Council agreed with this proposal, to the extent of making it a priority in its own six-month term of office. At this point, I must stress how embarrassed I am to see these empty seats, given that these proposals were made by the Swedish Presidency itself."@en1
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