Commission endorses Parliament’s CIA report

The European Commission has backed a European Parliament report in its call for member states to set up inquiries into CIA activity.

The report - approved yesterday (14 February) by 382 MEPs, with 256 voting against and 74 abstentions - highlights activity which took place in 13 member states, ranging from abductions, to illegal detention and transportation of suspects.

"The governments need to reveal the truth, even if the truth is disturbing," Franco Frattini, the commissioner for justice, freedom and security, told the Parliament.

The report urges the civil liberties committee to continue to monitor developments and if necessary recommend invoking the EU treaties to sanction member states which violated human rights.

The final version of the report includes new wording on the existence of detention centres in Poland, saying "it is not possible to acknowledge or deny that secret detention centres were based in Poland". Elements of the report were also watered down where a lack of co-operation by specific members of governments had been highlighted in earlier drafts.

Voting among the Parliament’s political groups largely followed political lines, despite threats ahead of the plenary session that a bloc of Socialist MEPs would vote against the report if criticism of their governments was not removed.

Still there was some divergent voting: 36 centre-right EPP-ED MEPs voted for the report, with 43 abstaining; two Socialist MEPs (both Polish) voted against the report, while six abstained; eight Liberal MEPs voted against the report and 12 abstained.

Sarah Ludford, a UK Liberal MEP, said that the attempts to change the report showed how damaging it was for governments. "The onslaught from EU governments using ‘their’ MEPs to try and weaken the report is in fact a tribute to its quality and force," she said.

But Jas Gowronski, an Italian centre-right MEP, said that the report found nothing new. "The temporary committee has found precious little evidence to back the long list of allegations and suppositions about wrongdoing by member states, which have been adopted as hard facts in today’s report," he said.

The European Commission has backed a European Parliament report in its call for member states to set up inquiries into CIA activity.