Mr President, I have asked for these five minutes to speak today on the Roure report on behalf of my group, the Group of the European People’s Party. Following Mr MacCormick’s splendid intervention, I should like to make an initial observation. Here we have three initiatives aimed at combating organised crime, a major blight on society. They contain a clear political desire to combine efforts, to go further and to develop this area of freedom, security and justice. To do this we have to take care that measures do not become dispersed, with the creation of an absolutely lopsided situation in which, as Mr MacCormick has so rightly said, one part of the process suffers. We must be especially careful with this since what is at stake is the distinguishing mark of European identity: the protection of fundamental rights and guarantees of a fair trial. As a result of the Tampere agreements, we need the guarantees of a fair trial to be developed in the area of the third pillar, and we need these guarantees to be developed when transnational situations arise, such as the ones he has described. This picks up on the theme of Mr Lehne’s intervention. Mr Lehne was explaining the problem of a lawyer’s professional secrecy in the context of this fight against money laundering. Well, here we have another good example: in combating money laundering we may put at stake something that, far from being a lawyer’s privilege, is an essential element in this right to a fair trial, which in turn is an essential element in all our European development, culture and identity. I realise it is very difficult because here we have to construct something from a scattering of instruments. We have a directive to combat money laundering; we have a framework decision to combat it; we have an amendment to the Europol Convention. At some moment, we will have to compile all these texts because, Mr President, you and, doubtless, all of us here know that for this to be implemented by judges – who are the ones that have to implement it while guaranteeing the right to a fair trial – with this scattered system we are, of course, very poorly guided. I shall now focus on another issue, which also concerns the quality of the legislation. This report includes a recital on the Geneva appeal, and the Group of the European People’s Party will vote against it, not because we are against the Geneva appeal, but simply because as Parliament we must ensure the quality of legislation. The Geneva appeal is not a recital; it is not a legal reference nor a quasi-legal reference to a European Council. Finally, on the PPE’s initiative, two amendments to Article 8 have been included, because if we agree on the political will to combat organised crime, we cannot provide a chance for a Member State to refuse this cooperation – we are talking about legal cooperation, between judges – by invoking matters of national interest. Where does national interest come in when it is a case of one judge in the European Union asking for the cooperation of another judge in the European Union? What intermediate authority is going to interfere saying that there is national interest involved here? Let us be clear that it is one of two things: either we want to develop this area and not just leave a fine-sounding phrase in the Treaty, or – let us bow to the evidence – we do not want to carry what we have put in the Treaty through to its ultimate consequences and achieve this area of freedom, security and justice. Lastly, Mr President, the Group of the European People’s Party supports the compromise amendment that we have reached with Mrs Roure on lawyers’ activities. When lawyers act outside professional advice, outside what is fitting for a lawyer, let justice descend on them as it does on everyone else, because their professional secrecy is not a privilege for them, it is a right deriving from the legal structure and the guarantee of a fair trial. Hence we realise that the compromise amendment is certainly redundant, but for the sake of consensus in the House we shall vote in favour. Mr President, I should like to conclude by asking the Commission, in the difficult task it has ahead of it, in which it is making an enormous effort, to take into account these initiatives that I am putting forward on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party.

Political group: PPE-DE