Ladies and gentlemen, fifty years after the start of the construction of Europe, it is high time for the European Union to at last endow itself with a supervisory authority designed to protect the people of Europe from the potential abuses related to the multiplication of computer-based files containing personal data. The exponential growth of the European Union’s tasks and jurisdiction, and the proliferation of Community bodies, mean that we must have a precise legal definition of the citizens’ rights, and these should cover the transfer of information between European Union institutions and bodies. Under the codecision procedure, the Council submitted a proposal for a regulation to the European Parliament on the basis of Article 286 of the EC Treaty. This article specifies that data protection should be effective within the European Union by 1 January 1999. Nigh on two years later, we have not yet brought matter to a conclusion. This means we should not get embroiled in a lengthy codecision procedure which would delay the implementation of this instrument even longer. This is what Mrs Paciotti has done, and I really think our rapporteur has done a truly remarkable job. Let us get to the heart of the matter. The main bone of contention between the European Parliament and the Council is to do with the jurisdiction of this future supervisory authority. Should it confine itself to the first pillar, i.e. the purely Community bodies, institutions and legal standards, or should it cover all Union-related provisions, i.e. the second and third pillars, such as Schengen or Europol? We think it obvious that the risks related to the private lives of citizens and the misuse of citizens’ personal data are far greater in the context of the third pillar, which at present is subject to little or no judicial and parliamentary control, than in the context of the first pillar, which falls within the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice. In my opinion, it is clear that we would be closing our eyes to the problem if we set up an authority of this type to cover just the Community area, while the main problems arise and will, in future, arise due to third pillar bodies too. Are you aware, for instance, that the Schengen system has amassed over ten million files on almost one and a half million citizens, and that Europol, whose sphere of competence is being incessantly expanded, has a central database of information from the various police forces of the fifteen Member States, all this supervised only by an authority with neither the powers nor the resources available to it to enable it to carry out another task properly. The report which we are to adopt does not reflect this ambition. The scope of the regulation adopted on the basis of the report is limited to the first pillar, i.e. to Article 286. The second and third pillars will not be covered by this regulation and will therefore remain impenetrable, to the detriment of citizens’ basic fundamental rights. In addition to the restrictive reading of Article 286, however, it would have been possible to take Article 255 of the Treaty as a further legal basis in order to expand the scope of this regulation. Indeed Mrs Paciotti attempted to do so by including a reference to this article in Article 12 of the regulation, but the Council refused to entertain this possibility. There are many other problem areas which require some pragmatic evaluation if they are to be practicable. In the end, though, our rapporteur is well aware of these problems and is anxious not to add another two years to the existing backlog. We shall therefore offer her our support, in spite of everything, in the hope that the Council and, in particular, the Commission will be careful not to take advantage of the weaknesses of the text in order to attempt to make nonsense of it. They must, furthermore, seek to implement means for the protection of personal data in the second and third pillars too at the earliest possible opportunity. It is dangerous, in any case, to allow bodies such as Europol or the Schengen system to develop without parliamentary or judicial control.

Political group: Verts-ALE