Jean Marie Cavada (ALDE), author. – (FR) Mr President, Mr Rajamäki, Mr Frattini, fellow Members, before replying to the oral question, allow me briefly to thank you publicly, Mr Rajamäki, for organising the Tampere ministerial meeting, which took place in really excellent conditions.

As Chairman of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, I very much want clearly to express how keenly the European Parliament supports the Presidency’s and the Commission’s proposal to activate the bridging clause provided for by Article 42 of the Treaty. This bridging clause was, I repeat, devised at the very time when the European Union was entrusted with the task of facilitating cooperation between the Member States on security matters, that is to say at the time when the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht was drawn up. The clause did not include a deadline by which it had to be activated. Broadly speaking, it is enough for there to be a combination of mutual confidence and the right political conditions in order for this decision to be taken.

Oddly enough, this bridging clause has never so far been activated because transfer to the ordinary legislative procedure was determined directly by the Treaty of Amsterdam when it came to asylum and immigration policies and to judicial cooperation on civil matters and then by the Treaty of Nice, which facilitated transfer to the codecision procedure in the case of these policies that had been communitised. Police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters has, however, remained excluded from the scope of such communitisation.

On that basis, the question arises as to whether, 14 years after the Treaty of Maastricht, the political conditions – in the form of mutual confidence – have finally come together, enabling the Member States to agree to apply the normal decision-making procedure provided for since Maastricht to this highly sensitive field of cooperation.

For the European Parliament, the answer is clearly in the affirmative, and for three reasons. Activation of the bridging clause would, firstly, enable the democratic deficit to be reduced; secondly, strengthen the rule of law; and, finally, make for more effective decision-making.

Let us quickly consider these three points. Where the democratic deficit is concerned, I think it crucial to strengthen the democratic principle whereby all EU legislation, especially when it affects the rights and freedoms of the individual, must be adopted in association with the representatives of the people. There is a serious deficit when that does not happen.

To defenders of the status quo, who claim that this democratic principle is not absent from the third pillar because governments supposedly act under the supervision of their national parliaments, I should like to offer the following clear response. Can anyone sincerely maintain that national parliamentary supervision is sufficient to ensure democratic balance when decisions are adopted at EU, rather than national, level? What, moreover, is one to make of cases in which this parliamentary supervision is absent, as will be the case when it comes to renegotiating the agreements with the United States concerning, in particular, the Passenger Name Records (PNR) agreement – an extremely serious issue that will be considered outside the framework of any democratic control.

Let us turn now to the second reason, which has to do with the principle of strengthening the rule of law. According to this principle, it must be possible for a judge to verify the legality of legislation of any kind. Where EU legislation is concerned, the judge in question should, logically, sit in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. However, Article 67 of the Treaty establishing the European Community and Article 35 of the Treaty on European Union introduce such limitations on the competence of that jurisdiction that the judges themselves have expressed doubts as to whether certain legislation relating to the second and third pillars respects the principle of the rule of law. This issue therefore needs to be resolved.

Let us finally turn to the third point, which is about effective decision-making. As we all know, the need to maintain unanimity prevents rapid and effective decision-making of any kind, and this at a time when the seriousness of the threats to the EU since the attacks of 11 September and those on Madrid and London should encourage a much more rapid decision-making process.

Having noted these three weaknesses - and they are, moreover, difficult to challenge objectively – how is it possible still to justify postponing a decision that could have been taken as long as about ten years ago? Some claim, Mr President, that this issue should be settled within the framework of negotiations for a new Constitutional Treaty. That is something to hope for, but can we afford to await the outcome of this whole process, which will, at the very least, take two to three years when there are ongoing security threats and a permanent question mark over our freedoms? Admittedly, the bridging clause will require ratification by the national parliaments, and that could enable those who are more hesitant to gain a bit of time. This difficulty may, however, be overcome through more thorough dialogue with the national parliaments, which, moreover, we in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs will be receiving on 3 and 4 October 2006, that is to say next week, in the form of a big interparliamentary meeting at which we have high hopes of convincing them.

(Applause)