Full Minutes of the Meetings

SESSION OF WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31, 2004

Situation of Fundamental Rights in the EU (2003)

Κaramanou (PSE). – Mr. President, the annual report on fundamental rights comes at a difficult time, marked by the recent terrorist attack in Spain and the violation of the right to life of dozens of innocent people. At the last European Council, the discussions and decisions unfortunately remained on the surface, rather than addressing the essence and causes of the new situation created by the war against democracy, as President Pat Cox referred to terrorism.

It is certain that the repressive measures being promoted not only fail to address the root cause of the problem, which is primarily the huge inequalities and discrimination of the modern world, but they threaten to sweep away fundamental freedoms and democratic rights, thereby reinforcing, from another angle, the goals of terrorism. We are, in other words, heading with mathematical precision toward an Orwellian situation, where the protection of personal data will be non-existent and personal life will permanently be under the scrutinizing gaze of Big Brother. Terrorism serves as the pretext for inflating security expenditures and turning modern democracies into authoritarian police states, where every citizen is treated as a potential terrorist.

And while all of this is happening on the front of terrorism, another horrific crime, which takes place daily against thousands of women and children in the form of modern-day slavery, is last on our political agenda. Indeed, fundamental rights and democratic freedoms in the European Union face serious danger.