WRITTEN QUESTION E-0646/03 by Olivier Dupuis (NI) to the Commission. Smear campaign against Mohammed Charfi.
Date: 2003-03-04
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: Tunisia, association agreement, defamation, democracy, freedom of opinion, freedom of religious beliefs, international affairs, teacher

3.4.2004

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 84 E/3

(2004/C 84 E/0003)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0561/03

by Olivier Dupuis (NI) to the Commission

(27 February 2003)

Subject: Hunger strike by Mr Jebali

Mr Hamadi Jebali, the former editor of the Al Fajr weekly periodical, has been on hunger strike since
13 January 2003, i.e. for 36 days. According to Tunisia’s International Association for Political Prisoner
Support he was transferred on 12 February 2003 to the emergency ward of a hospital in Bizerte. Despite
numerous appeals from within Tunisia and around the world calling for Mr Jebali’s release, there has still
been no reaction from the Tunisian authorities. On 6 February a member of Reporters sans frontières, who
had asked to be allowed to visit Mr Jebali in the Nador prison in Bizerte (in the north of the country), had
his request turned down by the Directorate-General for Prisons. Mr Jebali’s lawyer, Mr Mohamed Nouri,
and his wife have reported that he is coming under intense pressure from members of the State Security
Department to abandon his hunger strike. His wife and his daughters (cid:1) whose house is under surveillance
(cid:1) have now had their passports taken away from them. In 1992 the military court in Tunis sentenced
Mr Jebali to 16 years in prison for ‘belonging to an illegal organisation’. At the time he had just completed
a one-year prison sentence for having published an article in which he criticised the military court system.

What action has the Commission taken in order to help Mr Jebali? Has it been able (via its delegation in
Tunis) to make direct enquiries regarding the conditions in which Mr Jebali is being held and the state of
his health, now that he has been on hunger strike for over a month? Has it raised the issue of a general
if so, how have the
amnesty for crimes of conscience committed during the 1980s and 1990s and,
Tunisian authorities reacted?

(2004/C 84 E/0004)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0646/03

by Olivier Dupuis (NI) to the Commission

(4 March 2003)

Subject: Smear campaign against Mohammed Charfi

Mohammed Charfi, an eminent professor of private law and former president of the Tunisian League for
threats from the imam of Kairouan,
Human Rights (1988-1989), has recently been the target of
Abdehrrame Khlif (who was a Member of Parliament for the Tunisian ruling party between 1989 and
1994). The threats were first uttered in June 2002, in a sermon fanatical in the extreme, and have been
circulating over the past few days in the form of a video recording. They are based on grotesque
misrepresentation of Mr Charfi’s words and amount to an out-and-out call to aggression. Mr Charfi, who
served as minister of education from 1989 to 1994, has won a Unesco award and, among other things, is
the author of an essay entitled ‘Islam and Freedom’, which was published in France in 1998 but initially
banned in Tunisia. After the ban was lifted last year, the pro-government press launched a smear campaign
against him.

Is the Commission aware of the plight of Mohammed Charfi and has it asked the Tunisian authorities to
explain why a long-running campaign of harassment and slander has been openly directed against him?
Given that the Ben Ali regime is using the crackdown on the En Nahdha Islamic movement as a pretext
to the
for systematic assaults on fundamental
intolerant
government connivance that has allowed the imam of Kairouan to disseminate his
fundamentalist imprecations? Does it not believe that it should employ every political and diplomatic
means to demonstrate its opposition to the increasingly repressive tendencies of the Tunisian regime,
thereby championing the democratic values underlying the EU-Tunisia Association Agreement?

freedoms, can the Commission remain indifferent

Joint answer
to Written Questions E-0561/03 and E-0646/03
given by Mr Patten on behalf of the Commission

(21 March 2003)

The Commission is following Mr Hamadi Jebali’s and other prisoners’ hunger strikes with great concern.
The Honourable Member is aware of the Union’s and the Commission’s position in particular on detention
conditions in Tunisia and of the instruments at our disposal to improve the situation notably of political

C 84 E/4

Official Journal of the European Union

EN

3.4.2004

prisoners. (See the Commission’s answers to his written questions E-0250/03 and 0263/03 (1), E-3031/
02 (2), and E-2526/02, E-2597/02 and E-2629/02 (3)).

Through its heads of mission in Tunis, the Union is continuing to monitor the hunger strike movement in
Tunisian prisons, as well as Mr Jebali’s situation.

The issue of a general amnesty for crimes of conscience committed between 1980 and 1990 has not been
raised by the Commission with the Tunisian authorities.

The Commission is not aware of the events reported by the Honourable Member regarding Mr Mohammed
Charfi. It is therefore not aware of acts or statements attributed to Kairouan’s religious authorities, but will
seek relevant information via its Delegation in Tunis.

Democratic values constitute an important element of the association agreement and the Presidency of the
Union, like the Commission, which is associated with it in tasks relating to these issues, is continuing to
press in its political dialogue with the Tunisian authorities, for their implementation in Tunisia.

(1) OJ C 161 E, 10.7.2003, p. 202.
(2) OJ C 192 E, 14.8.2003, p. 90.
(3) OJ C 155 E, 3.7.2003, p. 26.

(2004/C 84 E/0005)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0620/03

by Carles-Alfred Gasòliba i Böhm (ELDR) to the Commission

(3 March 2003)

Subject: Freedom of establishment and the securing of authorisation to carry out roadworthiness tests on

vehicles in Germany

Restrictions on the freedom of nationals from one Member State to establish themselves within the
territory of another Member State are prohibited under Article 43 of the EC Treaty, save where they are
justified in the public interest. Those restrictions have been interpreted by the Court of Justice as including
rules or provisions which apply both to nationals and to non-nationals alike but which in practice make it
problematic or less advantageous for nationals from one Member State to establish themselves in another.

Annex VIIIb of the 28 September 1988 Strassenverkehrs-Zulassungs-Ordnung (StVZO)
lays down the
requirements which bodies wishing to carry out roadworthiness tests in Germany must fulfil in order to
secure the necessary authorisation from each federal state. One such requirement is that of submitting a
series of documents and demonstrating that certain conditions of a practical nature have been met,
including one to the effect
the body seeking authorisation must comprise a minimum of
60 independent experts and that a minimum number of those experts must be based within the country
in which recognition is being sought.

that

Does the Commission not think that insisting that those requirements be met before authorisation can be
granted restricts freedom of establishment, since it calls for business investment
to be made and
entrepreneurial risks to be taken in advance? In practice, this makes it less attractive for a national from
some other Member State to set up a vehicle roadworthiness testing business in Germany.

the Commission not consider

Does
laid down under German law place
disproportionate restrictions on the freedom of establishment, even if such restrictions may be justified in
the public interest?

the requirements

that

Does the Commission not consider the German law in question to be incompatible with the general
principles underlying Council Directive 96/96/EC (1) of 20 December 1996 on the approximation of the
laws of the Member States relating to roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles and their trailers?

(1) OJ L 46, 17.2.1997, p. 1.