WRITTEN QUESTION E-0210/02

by Piia-Noora Kauppi (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(6 February 2002)

Subject: Return home of corpses within the EU

A growing number of Union citizens live in Member States other than their countries of origin. There are numerous reasons for this: many EU citizens, for example, work in another Member State, tourism is continuing to expand, and, in addition, more and more pensioners from northern Europe are settling permanently in the South. An inevitable consequence of greater migration and the rise of travel is that EU citizens are, to an ever-increasing extent, dying in parts of the EU outside their countries of origin.

However, at a time when the EU's single market area is operating more and more efficiently, absurd difficulties arise when a corpse is sent home from one Member State to another, resulting in needless costs and distressing delays for the relatives of the deceased person.

For example, a zinc coffin is not required when transporting a corpse (by road) from Strasbourg to Lyons (460 km) or from Ivalo to Helsinki (1 120 km), but has to be used when a corpse is transported from Strasbourg to Baden Baden (50 km). There are no logical hygiene or safety reasons for these differences.

At present, the return home of corpses from one country to another is regulated by the 1937 Berlin agreement and the Council of Europe Agreement on the Transfer of Corpses (concluded in Strasbourg in 1973). These agreements are now out of date because they are based on border policing of a kind no longer carried out, least of all in the Schengen countries.

Is the Commission aware of this unfortunate but unavoidable situation, which is occurring as the EU's internal market area is expanding and borders are opening up?

Would it be possible to lay down rules to govern the return home of corpses in the EU whereby a journey from one Member State to another would be as simple as a journey within the same Member State?

Joint answerto Written Questions E-0073/02, E-0087/02,E-0210/02, E-0344/02, E-0346/02, P-0407/02 and E-0679/02given by Mr Bolkestein on behalf of the Commission

(25 March 2002)

The Commission recognises that the repatriation of mortal remains of a person who has died in another Member State than his/her own is a sensitive and difficult issue which can cause great suffering for the family involved.

The Commission is aware of some individual cases, in particular, through the recent written parliamentary questions, where the repatriation of a deceased person from one Member State to another has raised difficulties. However, the Commission does not have any information or statistics which would provide an overview of a possible problem and its scope.

These issues potentially raise a number of questions, some of them in relation to different Community policies, for instance, transport, health, free movement, etc. However, it does not appear that there would be a clear Community competence to cover all these various aspects. Moreover, the regulations governing the transfer of remains of dead persons are laid down in the International Agreement of Berlin (1937, No 4391 League of Nations Treaty Series) and by the Agreement on the transfer of corpses of the Council of Europe concluded in September 1973. In any event it should be recalled that Member States which regulate the transport of deceased persons, must, in conformity with the case law of the Court of Justice, apply any requirements on a non-discriminatory basis. Any derogation based on public health grounds must also be in conformity with the case-law of the Court.

In the light of the above, the Commission will continue to follow these issues closely, but does not envisage any specific initiative for the moment.