Summary: April 11, 2002: Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Statement by H.E. Ambassador Juan Antonio Yáñez-Barnuevo on behalf of the European Union to mark the deposit of the first 60 instruments of ratification.
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The countries associated with the European Union Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, the associated countries Cyprus and Malta, and the EFTA countries belonging to the European Economic Area Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway align themselves with this text.
The European Union has supported from the very beginning the idea of creating an international criminal jurisdiction with a permanent character and universal scope. This is why we attribute special importance to this moment when we reach -and even surpass- the 60 ratifications or accessions that are necessary for the entry into force of the Rome Statute and, consequently, for the creation of the International Criminal Court, which is the first great institution to come to life in the new
millennium.
When the Statute was adopted at the Rome Diplomatic Conference in the evening of 17 July 1998, there were many who thought that its entry into force would take many years, even decades. The fact that this event takes place after less than four years shows that the Statute corresponds to a necessity that is widely felt by the international community. It is also due to the many efforts by people, belonging to governments, parliaments, international institutions, non-governmental organizations,
who have mobilized in order to ensure that what seemed utopian at a time soon would become a reality.
The European Union has also contributed, to the extent of its ability, to this wide movement by the international community which now allows us to foresee the early establishment of the Court at The Hague and its effective operation in the very near future. It is true that much still remains to be done, but the threshold that we cross today encourages us in our endeavour and sets a precise temporal perspective for the completion of the preparatory work in order to provide the Court with the
required means to perform its mission with fairness and efficiency.
We wish to congratulate all States which through their ratification or accession have ensured the entry into force of the Statute, thus opening the way for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. In particular, we wish to address our warm congratulation to those States which, by depositing today their instruments of ratification, have caused the benchmark set by the Statute to be reached. We hope that this crucial step will encourage other countries to do likewise in the coming
months, so that the Court, when it is born, is widely representative of the international community, before attaining full universality.
The European Union reaffirms its commitment to further the cause of the International Criminal Court, which will be an essential element in the struggle against impunity for the most heinous crimes which shock human conscience. We thus reiterate our willingness to continue working with other governments, institutions and organizations in order to ensure that the Court will very soon be in a position to provide justice in these serious cases, for the benefit of all mankind.
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