Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the mutual recognition of final decisions in criminal matters poses many problems, which we have tried to face and solve in the best way possible, thanks also to the input from the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market and its draftsman, Mr Joachim Wuermeling. This report has not had any amendments, and this is evidence of the solidarity we felt over the proposal. I hope the solutions proposed may find a broad consensus in Parliament in order to give greater strength to the arguments of all those in the Council and the Commission of the European Union that share them. A common area of justice will only make sense if, within it, the court decisions of one Member State are effective in all the other Member States. In concrete terms the intention is to allow the execution in one Member State of a final decision issued by the competent authority of another Member State. Until today, the recognition of decisions among the various Member States has been achieved through the request mechanism, a slow, complicated process with an even more uncertain outcome. In addition to the obvious aim of legal certainty inherent in the rapid and effective implementation of the law throughout the territory of the Union, mutual recognition seeks to achieve not only the social rehabilitation of those sentenced, who are no longer uprooted from the country in which they have chosen to live, but also the protection of victims’ rights. In order to set up a mutual recognition mechanism, two possible solutions could be put forward: either moving towards harmonisation of the legislative and judicial systems in the Member States, or basing the mechanism on mutual trust in the adequacy of the laws of individual states and the proper implementation of those laws in specific proceedings. We have opted for this latter solution, both because it is more feasible and because we are faced with legal systems which, although diverse, are based on a system of procedural rules that guarantee criminal decisions which are reliable and hence amenable to being enforced throughout the territory of the Union. We are, however, aware that, at least in the short term, it will be difficult to reach an agreement on a procedure for automatic recognition, since no Member State will ever be willing to associate itself with recognition of any final decision that does not respect certain essential common guarantees. The question is, precisely, that of the identification of these essential guarantees, such as respect for the principle of ne bis in idem, or respect for the right to an effective and not simply a pro forma defence, or respect for victims’ rights. It will also be necessary to have common rules on jurisdiction and competence in order, above all, to prevent duplicated proceedings, just as there must be common rules for the application of penalties for re-offending or for the accumulation of penalties. It will, however, be necessary to remove some obstacles that today prevent full recognition of final decisions in criminal matters, and among these obstacles are the requirement of dual criminality, which often allows the competent authority in the enforcing state to re-examine the decision issued by the authority of another Member State in both form and substance. The dual criminality problem must be put into perspective since, in all Member States of the Union, the acts that arouse the greatest social condemnation are subject to criminal sanctions. There is still the option – favoured by many of us – not to apply mutual recognition to a limited number of crimes, such as euthanasia, on which it would be difficult to reach an agreement. This report signals a first step towards the creation of the common area of justice, freedom and security. The course has been traced out; now we need to find the will and the political strength to press on to the end, elevating the guarantee system to the highest possible level.

Political group: GUE-NGL