Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-09-Speech-2-248"
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"en.20100209.14.2-248"2
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"Madam President, as you know, the European Union welcomed the promise made by President Obama to close the Guantánamo detention centre. He made the promise in his inauguration speech, and this was later endorsed by a joint declaration of the European Union and its Member States with the United States on 15 June last year.
As we have said, we also want – and this is also part of the joint declaration by the European Union and the United States – to explore the possibility of establishing and agreeing a set of principles between the European Union and the United States of America that can be a common point of reference in the context of our effort to combat terrorism, which is also part of the joint declaration.
In the European Union, we have a strong desire for the Guantánamo Bay detention centre to be permanently closed, and we welcome the fact that President Obama is persisting in his commitment to do so.
We are in favour of the law being applied and human rights being respected at all times, and in this declaration, the United States of course agreed. This therefore seemed to be incompatible with maintaining the Guantánamo detention centre, which had also become one of the pretexts for propaganda most frequently used by al-Qaeda.
It is true that the timescale that was planned for closing it – one year – has now passed. It is true, however, that there are difficulties, and we can give some examples, such as former prisoners in Yemen not being able to return there immediately. We are also finding that this issue is very controversial in the United States, although we welcome the fact that President Obama is persevering with his intention to close Guantánamo despite the strong opposition that he is facing in Congress, not only among the Republicans but also among the Democrats.
However, in any case, some prisoners have now left Guantánamo and are going to be tried in ordinary US courts, such as, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged brains behind the 11 September attacks, despite the concern that this generated in the United States.
We have therefore always been clear about our position in our contacts with the United States as well as recently, in the visit to Brussels by the United States’ special envoy on this issue, Daniel Fried, who was formerly responsible for relations between the United States and the European Union and who is now responsible for managing the closure of Guantánamo. During his visit to Brussels, and in the context of the human rights dialogue that the European Union regularly holds with the United States, concern was expressed by the European Union about the use of the so-called military commissions and prolonged detention without trial, and naturally, we expressed our opposition to the death penalty. These are very clear, firm positions that the European Union has maintained, is maintaining and will continue to maintain in its relations with the United States.
I imagine that in relations between members of the parliaments, in the transatlantic dialogue between legislators, you will also have had opportunities to uphold the same principles.
I believe that the European Union has fulfilled its agreement with the United States, an agreement that was set out in the joint declaration that I mentioned earlier. There are Member States that have already agreed to receive people who have been or are prisoners in Guantánamo, and the number that we can handle at the moment, among the European countries who have quantified the number of prisoners, along with Switzerland, which is a partner of the European Union in the Schengen area, is around 16.
In any case, you will also be aware that the decision as to whether or not to accept a prisoner from Guantánamo is naturally up to the Member States. The mechanism agreed by the Home Affairs Ministers of the European Union was the realisation of this desire to help the United States. We have always said that we wanted the Guantánamo prison to be closed, as it was clearly contrary to the most fundamental human rights. The European Union therefore needs to help to make this possible, as far as we can and in accordance with the decisions taken – I repeat – by each Member State individually and sovereignly regarding the possibility of receiving these prisoners. We can say that there were 242 prisoners in the detention centre when President Obama came to power, and that 44 of them have left the prison.
The existence of this detention centre is a serious problem, of course, for transatlantic relations. The joint declaration on the closure of the centre was made on the understanding that something similar would not happen in the future. This is, of course, the intention of the United States Government, and the position of the European Union has undoubtedly contributed to changing the position of the United States and its prison policy in relation to Guantánamo."@en1
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