Mr President, I would like to welcome the fact that we are holding this debate on an important measure which will unquestionably help us to make progress on the creation of the eagerly-awaited area of freedom, security and justice. I would first of all like to congratulate the rapporteur on the great interest she has shown in dealing with this initiative and on the excellent fundamental work she has done. Thanks to the Treaty of Amsterdam, we have managed to create the necessary legal bases to implement a whole series of measures at European level making the free, secure and just Europe we all want to see a reality. In 1999, the Member States, meeting at the Tampere European Council, stated that, in a genuine European area of justice, it must not be the case that the incompatibility and complexity of the legal and administrative systems of the Member States should prevent people and companies from exercising their rights or dissuade them from doing so. In order to prevent this kind of malfunctioning, the Member States established, as a cornerstone for judicial cooperation in the Union, both civil and criminal, the principle of the mutual recognition of judicial resolutions and sentences. But, in order for mutual recognition to be possible, it is also necessary to comply with another principle: that of reciprocal trust. This means that, in order for foreign judicial resolutions to be accepted as equivalent to national ones, there must be total confidence in the systems, both legal and judicial, of the issuing country. In this respect, as the initiative recognises in one of its recitals, the training of the members of the judicial bodies of the Member States is one of the factors which will lead to the success of the European area of justice. Furthermore, I believe that the initiative we are discussing is important. Its aim is to create a network which allows for the establishment of the necessary links between the different bodies of the Member States responsible for the professional training and continued training of the people responsible for the administration of justice. This will promote understanding between the different authorities and help establish a climate of trust. It will undoubtedly lead to better knowledge of the respective legal systems of the Member States and better functioning of the European area of justice. In this way, we will institutionalise a system of exchange of best practices and open up a fluid channel between the national bodies, while respecting the identity of each of them and their necessary judicial independence, which is the basis of the Rule of Law. I would like to focus on what I consider to be the most important aspect of the present initiative, which has already been mentioned by the rapporteur: the scope for action on the network. In fact, this has been the central issue of the main discussions, naturally, since it has a direct influence on the choice of legal basis. Despite the confused dispersal in the Treaties of the legal bases for the creation of the area of freedom, security and justice, I agree with the rapporteur that it makes no sense to create a network like the one we are discussing for the specific field of criminal law. In itself, justice is a single concept and therefore the coherent thing to do is to create a single network to coordinate the national bodies for continued judicial training, both in the civil field and in the criminal field. In view, on the one hand, of the opinion expressed by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market which rules out the choice of a double legal basis if it involves procedures which are incompatible with each other and, on the other, of the importance and the objectives of the initiative, I believe that the choice of the direction laid down in Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union as a legal basis is the most appropriate solution. Our work is based on the principle that articles are incorporated into the Treaty because they are expected to be used subsequently. In this respect, we should not be afraid of opting for this procedure, regardless of the fact that it has not so far been used. Furthermore, the choice of Article 42 has an even greater significance, since it means supporting the communitarisation of areas which are still relegated to particular procedures. In this regard, on behalf of the Group of the European Peoples’ Party , I would like to insist on the need to put an end to the legal dispersal and multiplicity of the legal bases for the creation of this area. This initiative will allow us to put into practice the will enshrined by the Member States in the said Article 42 of the Treaty and open up the road to the gradual communitarisation of the most important aspects of criminal law.

Political group: PPE-DE