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  • 02-02-2021 16:59

EU/Presidency: EP asks Van Dunem 'all documents' about prosecutor appointment


Brussels, Feb. 2, 2021 (Lusa) - The European Parliament (EP) today asked Portugal's minister for justice, who is chairing the Council of Justice Ministers of the EU, for all documentation concerning the procedure for appointing the three European Public Prosecutors who were not the first choice of the European selection committee.

The request is contained in a letter sent today to Van Dunem by the chairman of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), the Spaniard Juan Fernando López Aguilar, who justifies the request with the need for "full transparency" around the procedure for appointments to the European Public Prosecutor's Office and in the light of the "principle of mutual and sincere cooperation" between the institutions.

In the short letter, seen by Lusa, López Aguilar recalled that last week a joint hearing took place between the LIBE Committee and the European Parliament's Committee on Budgetary Control on the procedure for appointing Member State prosecutors to the European Prosecutor's Office, in which Van Dunem participated as she is chairing the Council of Justice Ministers of the EU, and in which the controversy surrounding, in particular, the appointment of Magistrate José Guerra by Portugal was addressed.

"The members of the relevant commissions asked for full transparency in this matter, in particular, because the Council, in three cases, selected a candidate from the list who was not the first choice of the selection panel in its opinion," the chairman of the commission said, referring to the cases of Portugal, Belgium and Bulgaria.

The chairman of the LIBE Committee stressed that "full transparency about the way in which European public prosecutors have been selected and appointed is important, and was further strengthened after the hearing of the [Portuguese] presidency of the Council of the EU at the joint meeting", at the end of which several MEPs expressed dissatisfaction with the clarifications provided.

"Therefore, and in line with the principle of sincere mutual cooperation, by means of this letter I would like to ask the Council to share with the Civil Liberties Committee all documents, including 'curriculum vitae', justification letters and minutes from all relevant meetings at all levels concerning the selection and nomination of candidates in cases where the selected candidate was not the first choice of the selection panel in its reasoned opinion", reads the letter signed by the Spanish MEP, member of the Socialist and Democrat group.

The request from the president of the LIBE Committee to the minister comes two days before Francisca Van Dunem re-appears before the Committee on Thursday afternoon, but this time to present the priorities of the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU in a joint session with the minister of the interior, Eduardo Cabrita, as they both chair the EU Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council this semester.

At the joint hearing on 26 January, which the chairman of the LIBE Committee referred to, Justice Minister Van Dunem clarified the appointment of the Portuguese magistrate to the European Public Prosecutor's Office and, amid "venturing" about "ironies", regretted that this controversy was "eternalising", but expressed her full readiness to cooperate with the European Parliament and to provide additional information should the need arise.

At the meeting, intended to take stock of the establishment of the new European Public Prosecutor's Office, which was attended by the Attorney General, Laura Codruta Kovesi, the question of the appointment of José Guerra was raised by several MEPs, including Paulo Rangel and José Manuel Fernandes of the Portuguese Social Democrat party.

Van Dunem recalled that the issue "has been discussed in the European Parliament, in plenary", with a speech by the Portuguese secretary of state for european affairs, Ana Paula Zacarias, on behalf of the Council of the EU - which Portugal chairs in the current six-month period - but said she believed that "legitimate doubts remain in the minds of some of the MEPs about the impartiality and transparency of this process", and, as soon as she was invited to participate in the session, she offered "immediately" to "provide all the necessary clarification".

"Allow me a first to say that this process has two ironies for me. The first is that when I took office in the government at the end of 2015, the enhanced cooperation process, the process of adopting the regulation, was blocked by Portugal. And in fact, it was the government of which I was a part that unblocked that regulation and allowed us to enter the first phase of reinforced cooperation", she began by saying.

The second irony, she continued, is that "the practice in Portugal is that when you have to nominate people for international posts you don't put them out to tender", which happened on your initiative.

"I decided, in this case, to propose to the government, and the government proposed to the parliament, a law to that effect, and although the law was not yet approved, we followed the rite that the law provided for, i.e., we defined that it would be the Higher Councils, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Magistrature - all bodies independent of political power - that would define the best candidates", she explained.

Van Dunem again explained what had happened, emphasizing that "the 'famous' lapses" were not on the curriculum of the magistrate José Guerra, but rather "a note that the government sent to notify its preference for a candidate other than the one who had been placed first in the 'ranking' by the selection committee".

Recalling that the Prosecutor's Office regulation "is clear" in indicating that the 'ranking' established by the independent European selection committee "is not binding", the minister reiterated that Portugal made "a different choice", as "there was a yawning difference" to the selection made by the Portuguese Superior Council of Magistracy, which ordered the candidate that the panel considered first in third place, 12 points apart from the first candidate".

While expressing her "willingness to provide further clarification" if this was considered necessary, Van Dunem regretted the time the controversy had already taken.

"It is now more than three months. We have been in this situation since October. The European Public Prosecutor's Office needs stability, it needs peace to work. If what we want is to make it operational, we need to resolve these issues very quickly, not perpetuate a problem that can perfectly well be clarified for arliament," she concluded.

After the speech by Dutch Liberal MEP Sophia in't Veld, the minister expressed dissatisfaction with the clarifications, calling instead for the Council to share all documentation with the parliament, and threatened to take legal action if it did not. The leader of the PSD delegation, Paulo Rangel, also considered that questions remained unanswered.

ACC/ADB // ADB.

Lusa