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Dear Chair,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you very much for giving both my colleague Wolfgang Schäuble and me the opportunity today to present to you together our programme for the German Council Presidency.
For you, today’s meeting is certainly nothing out of the ordinary. After all, ministers appear before you every six months to present their programmes.
However, from the perspective of the respective government, the situation is quite different. The Presidency is a tremendous challenge. It provides a country with the opportunity to take the lead in advancing our collective development and, at the same time, to set its own policy priorities.
The Union now has 27 members. With a six-month rotation period, my country would not assume the Presidency again until the year 2020. This numerical projection demonstrates that when the EU Presidency falls within the career of a national politician, it is quite a special occurrence. And this special occurrence motivates me to tackle this responsibility with the utmost commitment.
For the first time, we now have a Trio Presidency. Therefore, in the run-up to our Presidency, we closely coordinated our programme with our colleagues from Slovenia and Portugal. I am confident that this will enable us to accomplish our work with greater continuity and efficiency. Some of the projects that make headway during the upcoming five months will then be concluded during the subsequent Presidencies.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
For the area of legal policy - the field which I represent - we have set three goals:
Europe must be an area of freedom, security and justice. This is what our European treaties say; this is what our citizens expect; and this is what our political endeavours strive to achieve.
We have already made good progress in harmonising criminal law provisions and enhancing cooperation between law enforcement authorities, for example as a result of the European arrest warrant. But we must not forget the other side of the coin. For this reason, we must work more intensively to strengthen citizens’ rights.
Today, citizens and companies increasingly take advantage of the freedoms offered by a Europe without internal borders, and this is a positive development. But it also raises new issues of a legal nature. The law must keep pace with these changing circumstances. Therefore, we need greater legal certainty with respect to cross-border activities.
The more diverse these cross-border activities of citizens and the business sector become and the more porous the Union’s internal borders, the greater is the necessity of closer practical cooperation between the judicial authorities of the Member States. Only if we achieve this will we be able to ensure that national justice systems remain the guarantors of law and justice in a unified Europe.
I would like to focus on a couple of dossiers on which we are both working and which I feel are of particular importance:
According to the programme of the 1999 Tampere European Council, cooperation in the field of justice should build on the principle of mutual recognition. Instead of taking the bureaucratic and involved approach of establishing uniformity of law, we favour a procedure that, to a large extent, leaves national legal orders as they stand and trusts them to apply the principle of the rule of law. We want to strengthen this trust by guaranteeing suspects certain minimum rights in criminal proceedings, for example in respect of the right to be informed of their rights, the assignment of legal counsel or the provision of an interpreter.
We are currently conducting a broad dialogue on this project within the political arena and within society. For example, a conference among lawyers is taking place today on this very issue in Brussels, and I am pleased to note that Ms. BUITENWEG is attending as the competent rapporteur of this Committee.
I very much hope that this discussion process will prove fruitful and that we will be able to conclude this project successfully in the course of our Presidency.
A different dossier on which we also want to make progress concerns the more precise definition of so-called listed offences, which are those offences in respect of which the requirement of verification of dual criminality is waived between Member States. There is some ambiguity in this area, as the exact definition of "sabotage" or "terrorism" varies from one State to the next. We need a greater degree of precision in this respect, in order to ensure the predictability of state action.
However, citizens' rights must not only be protected from state authority, but also by means of state authority. For example, where people are in danger of becoming victims of racism or xenophobia. For this reason, we have resumed negotiations on a Framework Decision and it is our aim to establish a minimum degree of harmonisation of penal provisions in this regard.
For Germany, combating racism and xenophobia remains both a historical obligation and a present-day political priority. We are therefore committed to ensuring that incitement to hatred and violence, for example, constitutes a criminal offence throughout the entire Union. The philosopher Sir Karl Popper summed it up for us succinctly when he said, "We should claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to move on to the second area covered by our initiatives. The number of bi-national marriages and civil unions continues to rise and is perhaps one of the best indicators that Europe is indeed growing ever closer. Yet, where people join together, some also separate, and the need for resolution of new legal issues is becoming more urgent with the growth in bi-national marriages. For example, regarding the question of which law is applicable in the event of divorce and also applies to the consequences thereof.
The goal must be that, in an actual divorce case, one and the same national law will be applicable regardless of where in the EU the case is brought before court. In establishing this principle we want to prevent one of the parties choosing that country's law which is most favourable to him or her, especially given the fact that it is usually only the partner in the stronger financial position who is able to do so. For this reason, we should take steps to get moving on the Rome III Regulation. We need uniform rules across the Union so that the courts and parties to proceedings know which country's national law is applicable to resolve a legal dispute.
However, what is decisive here is not just the court decision itself but also how it can be enforced. As regards maintenance claims, for example, enforcement remains a very complicated matter for individual citizens in cross-border cases. The Regulation on the enforcement of maintenance obligations is intended to improve this situation. It therefore represents an important contribution to ensuring greater legal certainty for the people of Europe.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Along with the objectives of strengthening citizens' rights and creating greater legal certainty, my third objective is to improve practical cooperation between judicial authorities.
Firstly, this relates to the issue of criminal prosecution. Cross-border crime can only be combated using cross-border approaches. For this reason, the national authorities must work even more closely with one another, for example in the exchange of information from criminal registers.
The pilot project set up between France, Belgium, Spain and Germany has already demonstrated how this can function in practice. We want to establish a firm legal basis for this exchange of information by means of a Framework Decision. Our aim is clear: every judge within the European Union must be able to gain fast access to information held on the criminal registers of all the Member States, and if possible to do so electronically. Only in this way can we ensure that a suspect or an offender is judged on the basis of reliable information.
The exchange of information from criminal registers also serves as a model of how I envisage the successful organisation of cross-border action in the field of justice: not based on the creation of new bodies centrally, but on the establishment of networks between existing national bodies. Electronic communication offers the best possibilities to achieve this, and e-justice is therefore also a keyword of judicial cooperation in Europe.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are already successful in fighting cross-border crime today and a good indicator of this is the fact that we must now, at European level, also deal with the issue of enforcement of sentences.
It is now not uncommon that sentences suspended on probation cannot be effectively supervised because the sentenced person does not live in the Member State where he was convicted. Member States should therefore give each other more support in supervising the fulfilment of conditions of probation, and we propose drawing up an appropriate Framework Decision to help achieve this.
We are also confronted with similar problems in the enforcement of custodial sentences. In this area, too, we must take greater account of the fact that the citizens of Europe are becoming increasingly mobile, especially considering that it is in the interests of a prisoner's resocialisation to be held in custody near to his place of residence or that of his family. We have already made significant progress on this project and I am hopeful that we will soon be able to achieve political agreement among all the Member States.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have attempted to provide you with a brief overview of the objectives that the German Presidency has set itself. Whether these objectives can be achieved depends crucially on your support. I am aware of how important this Committee is and I look forward to purposeful and successful cooperation with you.
