Brussels, 19/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding proposed in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Thursday 18 July that a European Justice Minister should be created, just like the suggestions that a European Finance Minister should be created. This European Justice Minister could be the way of responding to the crises which regularly shake up the EU - like the current Romanian crisis or the Hungarian crisis which finished with recourse to the European Court of Justice.
The proposal has aroused a lukewarm reaction from the leader of the S&D Group at the European Parliament, Hannes Swoboda (Austria), who has warned Reding against politically biased statements. The idea of a European Justice Minister is indeed “valuable”, he said in a press release, but the commissioner should also have been able to propose this when governments of her own political family were ruling Romania with emergency decrees - “I do not recall an outcry then”, Swoboda said. In his opinion Reding should not fall victim to the political games being played, but rather she should act in an objective and neutral manner - “otherwise she risks undermining the value of the European Commission's evaluations”.
“We are currently speaking a great deal about the need for a European Finance Minister. I find that quite right. But I think that we also need a European Justice Minister in the not too distant future, who would have the means to impose the rule of law in the EU. He should have the right to bring a case before the European Court of Justice if the independence of justice is in danger in a State”, Reding told the German daily. She was expressing her opinion the day the Commission published its reports on the cooperation and verification mechanism (CVM) - reports which supported prolonging the measures for monitoring Romania and Bulgaria and drew up a serious account of the current situation in Romania (see EUROPE 10658). The European commissioner would like to strengthen the range of tools that Europe can use to force States to conform to the rules of democracy and the rule of law, she said in this interview. “In monetary union we speak every day about the need for strengthened control and supervision in order to strengthen mutual trust. It seems to be we have exactly the same need in the domain of justice”, Reding went on (our translation throughout). (SP/transl.fl)