The Third Pillar

The Third Pillar:
BY ANITA GRADIN

(EU Commissioner with responsibility for Justice and Home Affairs)

The Third Pillar is playing an increasingly prominent role in the European debate, and rightly so. If we are to achieve freedom of movement of people, we must also be able to tackle the problems arising from migration, organised crime, drug trafficking, fraud and corruption, and trafficking in women and children. We must create effective co-operation between our countries in the judicial area.

The Third Pillar and enlargement of the EU:
1997 has been dominated by work on the Amsterdam Treaty and enlargement of the Union. The European Union is facing a task of historic dimensions. The new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic, having cast off communism, are now seeking membership of the Union. For them, as for the existing EU Member States, the basic aim is to develop co-operation to guarantee peace, stability and democracy.

The challenges connected with the Third Pillar are considerable within the Union as it stands, and in the applicant states they are enormous. These questions are very much in the public eye.

Although our experience within the EU is different from those of the applicant states, the problems we encounter are basically the same. Organised crime affects us all. Let me mention one example: trafficking in women and children is an important political issue in the EU. It is now beginning to be recognised as important also in the applicant countries; it is their young women who are suffering. Another example: drug smugglers are using applicant countries as transit states in their operations. The prospective members are now realising that this also has the effect of creating a domestic market for drugs.

We share not only common interests but also a common responsibility. For our part, we must live up to the preaccession strategy; in the case of the applicant countries, it is a matter of introducing EU law in their legal and domestic spheres.

We have spent a great deal of time preparing the Commission's opinions on all the applicant states. I myself have visited all of them except one, this year and last, in order to form my own opinion. At an early stage, I drew attention to the fact that it will be precisely the Justice and Home Affairs aspects that will require a great deal of time and work in the run-up to enlargement.

It might seem obvious. If organised crime is allowed to spread, it starts to eat away at democracy. If the democratic institutions are unable to transpose and enforce the law, people start to lose faith in it. It also affects the countries' economies-investors want to be able to rely on the legal system. This is fundamental to the membership negotiations - in order to operate EU law you need stable legal institutions.

We in the EU must also be able to put our own house in order. The clearer and more effective we make our rules, the easier it will be for the applicant states to introduce them.

The Third Pillar and Amsterdam:
Last spring, we devoted a great deal of time to arguing our case in the intergovernmental negotiations in the run-up to Amsterdam. In the Third Pillar area, the Amsterdam Treaty marks a great step forward-although, of course, we would have liked it to have been even greater. I will return to the Amsterdam Treaty and our work on the follow-up to it later.

In addition to the work on these two central issues, we also adopted a number of specific initiatives in the past year.

Other initiatives in 1997:
We have tabled a proposal on temporary protection, which we debated here in the House in October. Our point of departure was that people with temporary residence permits should enjoy the same kind of protection, wherever they are in the Union. This was sparked by the major refugee crisis of the last few years, resulting in particular from the war in the former Yugoslavia. The proposal we tabled is a compromise between various interests. We are aware that historical ties and geographical factors play a major role in determining which countries asylum-seekers go to.

We have also tabled a proposal on a convention on rules for admission. Quite simply, we had a number of resolutions which we wanted to combine in a single instrument with similar rules on workers, the self-employed, students and postgraduates, family members and longterm residents. We need common and clear guidelines for immigration policy.

During 1997, I also tabled a Communication on recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil matters.¹ This is a proposal with practical implications for individuals and companies. As things stand today, it takes far too long and costs too much to have a judgment recognised in another Member State.

Synthetic drugs are spreading like wildfire among young people all over Europe. Drugs are 'designed' to avoid the laws banning them. It can happen that the authorities are forced to give back confiscated drugs simply because we have not managed to enter them on a list of banned drugs. At present it takes about two years to get a new drug onto the UN's list. This is clearly not acceptable.

When I realised the extent of the problem, I instructed my department to produce a proper analysis of the situation. This analysis was ready in January 1997 and we then prepared a Communication to Parliament and the Council of Ministers in May.² We proposed a system for the exchange of information, which would make it possible for us to warn each other quickly when new substances enter the market, to compare information and share analyses. We must also develop a way of banning new chemical drugs more quickly.

The Council of Ministers gave their support to a joint action back in June and we are now busy implementing it.

In our measures to combat drugs we work together in a highly effective way with both the European Parliament and the Presidencies. So far we have organised five major conferences - on drugs policy, the implementation of legislation in the field of drugs, a follow-up meeting with the USA, a conference on drugrelated crime and one on chemical drugs.

In addition, the Commission has also been very closely involved in anti-drugs activities outside Europe, especially in North Africa, South East Asia and Latin America. To name but one concrete example, I took part in December 1997 in a meeting in the Dominican Republic on the implementation of the action plan for combating drugs in the Caribbean, which was adopted in Barbados in May 1996. I am very impressed by the commitment we managed to inspire in the field of co-operation both between the EU and Caribbean developing countries and between the EU and the USA. It augurs very well for the future.

In November 1996 I put forward the action plan against trafficking in women,³which since then has been on the agenda for the EU Presidencies. A series of conferences, seminars and exchange programmes have taken the question further. Trafficking in women is also a matter for the Transatlantic Dialogue, and was most recently on the agenda for the EU-US summit on 3 December 1997. In spring the EU and the United States are to start parallel projects in Poland and Ukraine to try to protect young women from falling into the clutches of traffickers.

Trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation was the subject of a special debate in the European Parliament on 15 December 1997, when the Waddington report was on the agenda.⁴

As I said then, we are already busy looking at ways of following up the action plan.

As regards the sexual exploitation of children, we are in the process of drafting a Communication which will take a comprehensive approach to the question and will include a proposal for a common European register of missing children.

During the year we have embarked on the DAPHNE initiative,⁵ which is aimed at voluntary organisations working with children and women exposed to violence and sexual exploitation. It has aroused a great deal of interest, and we have only been able to aid some of the projects submitted to us. We now hope that the individual projects will be a way for us to acquire experience and skills which will also be of use to others. All the Member States of the EU are involved in the projects in one way or another.

We have also been putting an enormous amount of effort into implementing four multiannual programmes, SHERLOCK, GROTIUS, STOP and OISIN.

SHERLOCK⁸provides training and exchanges for judges, prosecutors, frontier officials and others who in the course of their duties come into contact with people exposed to trafficking for purposes of exploitation. OISIN⁹ concerns increased co-operation between police forces.

The common link between all these programmes is that they foster improved cross-border co-operation and contacts in Europe, and thereby help to promote legal certainty for the citizens.

During the year the Commission has also put forward proposals for two new multiannual programmes, FALCONE,¹⁰which I will come back to, and ODYSSEUS.¹¹ The purpose of ODYSSEUS is to reinforce practical co-operation between people working on forged documents, border controls and questions relating to asylum and migration. In 1996 we carried out a number of successful pilot programmes in that area.

If you ask what areas the European Union ought to focus on, most respondents will say it should be combating international crime, drugs and violence. That is what worries people today. They look to us to make real efforts to defend their personal freedom, security and safety.

The Commission has played an active role in work on the Union's action plan to combat organised crime. It did so before the Dublin summit, when it was decided to set up a high-level group to draw up the plan. The Commission has continued to take an active part in the work, both before and after the Amsterdam summit.

It is gratifying that the Council has endorsed actions by both the Member States and by the Union institutions, backing up words with deeds and making the campaign against organised crime effective. The facts speak for themselves. In the European Union there are fifteen different legal systems, with varying definitions of fraud and major differences between the rules on banking and financial activity. Organised crime knows very well how to exploit this situation. There is a need for closer co-operation and more effective Union action to combat crime.

Quite simply, we must work pragmatically and also be prepared to tackle new types of crime. I am thinking, for example, of the rapidly increasing levels of crime involving electronic resources (cyber crime), database trespassing, money laundering and so on. To create more opportunities for effective co-operation I have put forward a proposal for a joint operation known as the FALCONE programme. Its objective is, in fact, to promote closer co-operation between people working in the field of law enforcement in the Member States.

Obviously the fight against organised crime and corruption is an important element in the forthcoming accession negotiations with eastern and central European countries. The proposal in the action plan is that there should be a special co-operation pact against organised crime between the applicant countries and the EU's Member States. The Commission is now working together with the Presidency to consider how such a pact can be formulated.

Before this House I have repeatedly deplored the fact that conventions in the area of the Third Pillar have still not entered into force. I am thinking of the Europol Convention,¹⁴ They are essential tools in the fight against organised crime, and I would appeal to you as parliamentarians to put pressure on your respective national capitals. Only when the conventions are ratified will we have efficient tools in our hands.

The future:
As I said in my introductory remarks, one effect of the Amsterdam Treaty is that co-operation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs is raised to a new level. It includes a five-year work programme on ways of integrating border controls and migration and asylum into the First Pillar. On the remaining areas within the Third Pillar - police and customs matters and criminal law - one way of developing co-operation will be framework decisions.

We will continue working with the tools given us by the Maastricht Treaty, while at the same time preparing for the day when the Amsterdam Treaty comes into force.

I think there needs to be a proper survey of the effects of the new Treaty on questions relating to Justice and Home Affairs. I have therefore set in motion an analytical study which I will present to the Parliament and the Council in the form of a wide-ranging communication.

As I have already said before this House, I hope that, in the same way as a White Paper, this Communication will serve as an important basis for a thorough discussion of the ways in which we can establish a Europe of freedom, security and justice.

Text of the contribution by EU Commissioner Gradin at the European Parliament's annual debate on the Third Pillar, Strasbourg, 16 December 1997.

Information sources on justice and home affairs are listed at Section 3.2 in 'Recent references in each issue of European Access.

Notes

^1. COM (97)609 final (26.11.97)

^2. COM (97)249 final (23.5.97)

^3. COM (96)567 final (20.11.96)

^4. European Parliament Session Document

Series A. Committee Reports of the European Parliament A4-372/97

^5. Official Journal C136, 1.5.97, p14

^6. Official Journal L287, 8.11.96, p7

^7. Official Journal L287, 8.11.96, p3

^8. Official Journal L322, 12.12.96, p7

^9. Official Journal L7, 10.1.97, p5

^10. COM (97)528 final (20.10.97)/ Official Journal C352, 20.11.97, p7

^11. COM (97)364 final (9.9.97)

^12. Official Journal C316, 27.11.95, p1

^13. Official Journal C313, 23.10.96, p11; Official Journal C191, 23.6.97, p13

^14. Official Journal C316, 27.11.95, p48. See also Official Journal C11, 15.1.98, p5