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Ludford backs EU moves to block fine-dodgers
January 17, 2002 12:00 AM
By Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
By Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
Madam President, we welcome this initiative as another small step along the road towards fulfilling the Tampere mandate to make the principle of mutual recognition the cornerstone of judicial co-operation. It is right that within a developing area of freedom, security and justice Member States ought to begin laying the foundations for establishing trust in each other's legal systems.
We need an EU legislative initiative to facilitate efficient cross-border co-operation and improve upon previous international legal instruments, which are often cumbersome and bureaucratic. Indeed, the 1991 Convention on the enforcement of criminal sentences - which otherwise would be relevant here - is not yet in force some ten years after it was signed.
It is right for the EU to base co-operation on the concept of executing the decision of the issuing State, rather than that of deciding whether or not to grant co-operation in response to a request. The other international convention - the 1970 Convention - contains 13 grounds on which a request can be refused, so we can understand why the system does not work at the moment.
However, many of us in this House are concerned not to allow the principle of mutual recognition to undermine the rights of the individual and in this field generally it is essential that the legal safeguards outlined not only in the European Convention on Human Rights but also, I would say to Mr Blokland, in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights - which ought to be legally enforceable - should be observed.
My group would certainly agree with Mrs Cerdeira Morterero that we should use the existing system of contact points in the European Judicial Network, as it is pointless to keep reinventing the wheel with different systems of contact points for various initiatives.
However, we have a core problem here: people who care about civil liberties - and here I include myself - are put on the spot about agreeing to measures of mutual recognition without having a comprehensive programme to raise the standard of observance of individual rights. My group believes that we need a comprehensive approach to this, and we are very much looking forward to the Commission White Paper on this subject.
I have been reproached for agreeing to the European arrest warrant, while very strongly supporting individual rights. It is a challenge to all of us - Parliament, the Commission and the Council - to put in place those safeguards, because it is difficult to keep on agreeing until we have them. But my group believes that, with the Eurosceptics of the Right objecting to any co-operation in this field, we have to say that those of us who are not on the Right, who care about civil liberties, should agree to these measures but then put pressure on the Commission and the Council to have these citizens' safeguards.
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