Strasbourg, 28/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - Addressing the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, the Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker proposed that a third pan-European Summit be organised. Luxembourg currently holds the Presidency of the Council of Europe and the prime minister called for the European Union to join the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). He also discussed immigration and the war on terror.
Council of Europe must keep true to its vocation
The Council of Europe does not need to search for a new identity, Juncker told the MPs, criticising the attitude of people trying to pit the pan-European organisation in competition against the European Union, since they still complement each other. He added that the EU must not give the impression, to itself or to the outside world, of being an exclusive club for the select few. The EU has to pursue its own path, enjoy its own dreams, become more integrated in order to prevent becoming no more than a free trade zone with enlargement, at a very high level of course, but with an insufficiently planned structure to be able to meet the needs of a continent that remains highly complicated. The Council of Europe is in the process of carrying out its own enlargement and must continue down its own path.
The EU should join the ECHR to ensure legal effectiveness
I feel it would be appropriate if during the work of the Convention and the Intergovernmental Conference of all the EU countries by 2004, the European Union were to join the ECHR, said Juncker, noting that this was justified by legal effectiveness, to ensure that all countries could implement rulings of the European Court of Human Rights since they would not be subject at the same time to contradictory obligations from the EU. The EU has to join in its own right, he argued, since it is rather odd for the EU to demand that countries wanting to join the EU to ratify the ECHR beforehand, if it wants to extricate itself from the external control foreseen by the ECHR structure and instruments. He felt it would be better to open ones eyes and avoid running the risk of heading for conflict of large proportions if measures were not taken to avoid this.
Greater co-operation on immigration and combatting terrorism
Mentioning the EU's discussions on immigration in Seville, the Luxembourg prime minister said he perfectly understood that areas of lack of understanding had arisen, noting that exemplary clarity had to be reached on these points. The EU needs immigration and cannot close its doors. All countries of Europe have to continue to welcome people pursued because of their race, sex, religious or political ideas. Juncker added that the EU gives the impression of only wanting to consider the impact of clandestine illegal immigration and ignoring the necessary management of legal immigration. He went on that the Council of Europe had to be involved in the continent-wide management of illegal clandestine immigration which turns migrants who are unhappy at home into immigrants unhappy over here. In this vast domain, he said, the EU and the Council of Europe will gain from working together as closely as possible. He also called for better co-operation between the two organisations in combatting international terrorism, noting that terrorism is not a phenomenon that can be separated off from its profound causes and adding that the EU and the Council of Europe had to take this on board. Until poverty has been eradicated, while a huge proportion of humanity lives in the most absolute misery, terrorists will always find fertile soil enabling them to commit reprehensible acts.
For a Council of Europe Summit before the end of 2003
The EU is starting its enlargement process and the Council of Europe is on the verges of finishing its own enlargement. The political concept underlying the EU is tighter than the Council of Europe's, said Juncker, concluding that in order to avoid giving the impression to the Council of Europe's Member States that they have been irrevocably excluded from the EU, heads of state of the Council of Europe's Member States should meet before the end of 2003 to celebrate the gigantic European process that people have been able to follow over the past fifteen years.