Brussels, 08/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the European Parliament expressed frustration at not having been consulted over the list of terrorist organisations adopted at the end of December by the Council and, more generally, it criticised the way in which the Council was operating in the area of justice and home affairs. Two resolutions were passed by a huge majority; one on the decisions taken at the end of December (411 to 36 with 22 abstentions) and the other on the setting up of the European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (362 to 57 with 9 abstentions). The resolutions flesh out Parliament's position - after criticising the process used to adopt the decisions, the EP approved the two framework decisions in question (on the European arrest warrant and terrorism), approving of their actual content (see EUROPE of 7 February, p.12).
Six MEPs from the PPE, PES, Liberals and Greens jointly tabled the draft resolution criticising the fact that the Council had used the written procedure to adopt common positions on the freezing of terrorists' assets and the list of terrorist organisations (see EUROPE of 29 December, 4 January and 9 January). The EP wanted to be consulted and argued that the complex legal nature of these measures (comprising several legal instruments and bases) and their adoption using the written procedure seemed to be an attempt to get round the democratic control of the European Parliament. The MEPs demand the measures be subordinate to the framework decision on the definition of terrorism (that incorporates safety measures), adding that trade union or political demonstrations cannot be seen as terrorist acts. They also call on the Council to consult them on the implementation of the measures in question, even if the EU Treaty does not actually make this compulsory.
The resolution put forward by Alima Boumediene-Thiery (Greens/EFA) on the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice pointed out that the European Parliament is not satisfied with the role set out for it in the Treaties in terms of justice and home affairs being at best consulted on such issues without its view being binding. The EP again regretted the impact of dividing up issues concerning the implementation of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice between the first and third pillars, which resulted in things getting blocked at the Council and taking a long time to be processed and also in a serious lack of democratic control. Since they had a consultative role, the MEPs demanded that their opinion be taken seriously, wanting to be consulted over genuine draft texts before they are formally decided upon through political agreement.
In terms of asylum and immigration, the EP welcomed the Commission's proposals and regretted the persistent holding up of texts in Council, feeling that the transfer that had been decided in Amsterdam of immigration and asylum issues from the third to the first pillar had not improved matters in that unanimous voting was still required but not codecision. Parliament regretted that in view of its failure to reach agreement on asylum procedures and family regroupment, the Laeken European Council had asked the Commission to put forward new proposals in this connection. In terms of police and legal co-operation, the MEPs welcomed the work carried out by the Commission and Council over recent months, but wanted greater consultation with the EP. The resolution calls on the Commission to speed up the adopting of minimum guarantees for penal procedures (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.13), calls for EUROPOL's operations to be reviewed and called on the EU to cooperate in order to combat all forms of organised crime. (At the Laeken European Summit, the EU discussed the implementation of the Tampere programme (see EUROPE of 18 December and 7 November 2001.)