Ladies and gentlemen, judicial and police cooperation is one of the most fundamental issues in the construction of a European area of freedom, security and justice and will enable this area to swiftly become real and effective for the citizens. In dealing with these matters, our rapporteurs have centred their considerations both on the Protocol amending the Europol Convention and on improving mutual assistance. We can but congratulate them on their work. Our primary concern, however, relates to the extension of Europol’s competences. We agree that there is an express and urgent need for effective judicial cooperation, but, at the same time, denounce a shift that contains the seeds of a Europol set up outside the control of Parliament or of any legal authority, and, in more general terms, a democratic deficit in a Europe that the Member States insist in confining to the misty realms of intergovernmental procedures, thus skirting the obligations, duties and control that derive from universal suffrage. I can see grey areas regarding Europol: the diplomatic immunity of its members, no definition of authorised resources nor of the limits on these, notifications of the filing of personal records, filing of records in areas protected by international texts and declarations of human rights, threats to freedoms given the risk of their being abused, now or in the future, following the kind of political changes liable to be seen in certain Member States. Were the European police force to be offered this heaven-sent chance of potential self-regulation, it would do its utmost to curb the European Parliament’s vague desire for democratic control, given the current deficiencies at organisational level and the lack of unity on the background issues. The Portuguese initiative concerning the Europol Convention is intended to spur the European Parliament into choosing the right route to ensuring security, with this hingeing around a discretionary filing of records on citizens in all the areas affecting their private lives. Of course, we must identify, prosecute and sentence people who launder dirty money on behalf of terrorists, arms dealers and drug traffickers. But this will not provide us with firmer guarantees on the right of defence and the protection of citizens’ rights. It is for this reason that we are tabling amendments on the strengthening of these rights and freedoms, on the need to adopt an instrument, on the right of defence, and on the recognition of the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice. It has not escaped our notice that one of the articles in the Council Act, which has curiously not been commented on, stipulates that Europol is to specify whether data relating to ethnic origin, religious or other types of beliefs, political leanings, sexual tendencies or health can be included in the data records. Are we going to equivocate any longer over Europol’s competences when the very notion of democratic control has been struck off the statute book? The democratic values that everyone in this Chamber shares must be the very ones that govern our deeds and works, in order to forge a European Union based on solidarity and social commitment and not on policing and repression.

Political group: Verts-ALE