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We must uphold our standards in freedom, security and justice, not erode them further
October 13, 2004 12:00 AM
By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
Mr President, before I begin my planned remarks, I wish to correct the PPE attempt to rewrite history: the PPE and its right-wing allies voted on Monday to stop Mr Buttiglione being a Commissioner at all.
In the next five years of constructing an area of freedom, security and justice, we need effective and coherent action, democratic legitimacy, legal certainty and respect for fundamental rights. That would be a great improvement over the last five years. In spite of the valiant efforts of Mr Vitorino - whom I salute and will greatly miss - even he cannot work miracles on the Council.
Let us look at effectiveness. As the Commission's communication said, the justice and home affairs dimension is now firmly identified as one of the Union's priority policies. However, when the Commission cites the volume of justice and home affairs business being done in the European institutions and the regular appearance of such items on the European Council's agenda as evidence of their vital importance, I fear the wrong benchmark has been chosen, for while justice and home affairs generates 30% of translation work in the Council, it only produces 5% of the decisions. We also know that intelligence and police liaison is inadequate: the German and Spanish authorities had different bits of information that could have identified the 9/11 terrorists, even if it could not have prevented that atrocity.
The record of implementation of EU decisions that are taken is poor. Italy, the country in which Mr Buttiglione is still a minister, has not implemented the European arrest warrant. Meanwhile that country is breaching the UN Refugee Convention by deporting migrants to Libya and preventing their access to an asylum determination procedure. Therefore, coach and horses are being driven through the rule of law by the government that purports to supply the next Commissioner for Freedom, Security and Justice.
The EU record on upholding fundamental rights, already fragile, is at risk and needs to improve radically. The measures on asylum and immigration in the last five years are incomplete and unbalanced and have incorporated some of the worst aspects of national policies. In particular, we have made almost no progress on avenues for legal immigration. No wonder the smugglers and traffickers are laughing all the way to the bank.
We face increasing threats to privacy from various directions, including proposals for traffic data retention, transfer of air passenger data, profiling, merging of various databases, etc. Meanwhile, data protection authorities are under-powered and under-resourced and there are no European rules specifically for the criminal justice area.
We must uphold our standards and values in future, not erode them further. The EU should seek positively to raise standards of protection of citizens' rights and a culture of respect for fundamental freedoms in order to create the mutual trust necessary for mutual recognition. The Human Rights Agency, which I hope will be set up soon, should monitor and evaluate against the standards in the Treaties.
Last, but certainly not least, we urgently need transparency and democratic scrutiny. Why, as Mr Bourlanges said, is the Council dragging its feet and defying the Treaty of Nice, which requires a semi-automatic passage to codecision as well as qualified majority voting? The myriad of arrangements on judicial and police cooperation between national officials - not eurocrats, let us note - need to come within the ambit of parliamentary scrutiny, as do the activities of the Anti-Terrorism Coordinator.
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