EUROPE MUST NOT DESTROY DEMOCRACY BY TRYING TO PROTECT IT

COOPERATION AGREEMENT EUROPOL/USA

Brussels, 6 December 2001 - Declaration of the Radical MEPs Maurizio Turco, rapporteur on Europol, and Marco Cappato, rapporteur on privacy in electronic communications:


Following the signature of the cooperation agreement between Europol and USA we reaffirm our conviction that terrorism can not be defeated through antidemocratic methods.

The fact that the EP is reduced to a consultative body with regard to Third Pilar matters hurts European democracy - if the system that rules today EU Institutions can be defined as so - and impede from moving forward in concrete terms in the achievement of a european area of security, liberty and justice, that should be above all and a priori a democratic one.

After 11 September it is indispensable to increase cooperation and exchange of informations and datas between different countries, but simultaneously it is necessary to submit these operations to a democratic control.

The denigrating attitude of the Council towards the EP, the only European institution democratically elected, is above all an insult to the tradition, the history, the democratic reality of the USA.

For this reason too we have demonstrated today in front of the Council with the slogan "Europe must not destroy democracy by trying to protect it".