Proposition 53K2841

Projet de loi portant le Code consulaire.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP the Di Rupo government

Submission date

May 29, 2013

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

embassy civil register foreign policy civil status consulate diplomatic immunity notary official document passport diplomatic profession stamp duty

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit LE PS | SP Open Vld MR

Abstained from voting

Groen Ecolo ∉ N-VA LDD VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Bernard Clerfayt (MR) abstained from voting.
• Peter Luykx (CD&V) abstained from voting.
• Olivier Maingain (MR) abstained from voting.
• Damien Thiéry (MR) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Oct. 10, 2013 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr Deseyn, rapporteur, refers to the written report.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, colleagues, the consular work is sometimes mistakenly overlooked. I would really like to see the Minister of Foreign Affairs here, but there is a member of the government and we are already pleased with that. However, diplomacy is more than just organizing high-level visits between heads of state and government, or conducting political negotiations in international organizations.

For our compatriots abroad, a visit to a consulate is the moment when he or she comes into contact with diplomacy. Often these are administrative acts, such as the renewal of a driving license or the death of a notarial act. Sometimes there are real emergencies. Suppose you are robbed on a trip, you are sick or you need to be urgently repatriated. At such times, it is crucial that our diplomatic and consular staff can act efficiently abroad. The citizen must also be able to be assisted in a customer-friendly and empathic way, especially when he or she is in difficulty.

Consolidating and updating the existing legislation in this Consular Code is in itself a good thing. However, we are convinced that this is a missed opportunity. The present draft is neither clear nor comprehensive.

Allow me to go a little deeper into this. What do we mean by “not clear”? As an example, I would like to take the language legislation. My group has already cited this in the committee and has also submitted an amendment in this regard. It is true that our professional diplomats and consuls must be multilingual, but in practice it often happens that compatriots at the consular lock cannot be assisted in their own language. I remain convinced that citizens and entrepreneurs abroad benefit more from services in their own language than from parallel support through federal economic advisors. That should have been the focus.

The draft law defines the duties of consular officials and honorary consuls. Will the duties in the law still be adjusted following the new organic regulation of your administration? It is about the administration of Mr. Reynders, but I look at the representation here to get an answer to that. It is not at all clear what the distinction is between the duties of the honorary consul, on the one hand, and those of the economic advisors, on the other. I will not repeat the criticism of the advisors here, we have expressed them in the committee in detail. However, I take note of the vague description of the task package of the advisors, who “in exceptional cases can perform specific tasks”. So this is not clear; maybe some clarification may come later.

A second point of criticism is the incompleteness, because according to my group there are also many shortcomings. There is no mention of the tasks that the European External Action Service has to perform in consular matters. Nevertheless, non-Belgium should also be further assisted by our diplomatic missions. On the contrary, our compatriots also expect assistance from other EU embassies.

Furthermore, the draft law does not refer anywhere to the task that private companies have to fulfill, for example in issuing visas.

What about the consular legal aid that compatriots abroad can apply to? This is one of the main tasks of every consul.

A lot of questions remain open here and there are a lot of uncertainties. I will not go further into the technical comments, we have done this in full in the committee. However, for the reasons just cited, my group will abstain when voting on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, beyond its technical aspects, this new Consular Code is important, because it will allow to see it more clearly in the consular relations of our country by replacing and regrouping a number of already existing laws while updating and modernizing them.

All these arrangements will, I think, make it possible to facilitate the life of Belgians abroad, but also of diplomats and of all foreign affairs officials.

Services to our expatriates should be a priority. My group is quite convinced of the importance of the services to be rendered to the Belgians and more broadly to the European citizens in the context of our intra-European solidarity that must be integral to the objectives of Foreign Affairs, both in the traditional and more painful situations.

The new competencies and responsibilities in the head of the general consuls seem to me thus to go in the right direction, as does the fact that the ambassadors remain, of course, the heads of actual positions. As such, I would like to emphasize that my group supports the project for the merger of external careers. There are many reasons for us to support this bill.

However, while many questions were answered in the committee, the debates also highlighted some difficulties such as those of the presumption of paternity and the problems of applying Article 316bis of the Civil Code, a technical problem that I and the Federal Ombudsman raised in its recent interim report.

However, this bill already provides for a legal basis for making the declaration provided for in this article in the event that the Belgian rules evolve and allow, subsequently, that such declaration may be made abroad.

So the ball now seems to be in the field of the Minister of Justice to clarify this situation. My colleague Laurence Meire also questioned her in a committee on this subject. As such, I think it was not possible to hear the Federal Ombudsman on this subject in a committee. His hearing as part of the passage and the adoption of this draft in the Senate would be a very good initiative that could be taken by our colleagues senators.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, the Consular legislation exists, has lived and lived well. Based essentially on legislation dating back to 1851, the Consular Code was based on many legal advances, notably in the fields of notariat and civil status.

In addition, the legislative text silenced many important multilateral conventions governing the role and competence of consuls. I am especially concerned here with the principle of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the European agreements on consular cooperation abroad. A comble for an activity driven by essence towards the international! It is time for it to resolutely enter the 21st century.

I can therefore only rejoice that the Consular Code is being renewed, simplified and modernized. This project is fully part of the reorganization of our network of embassies and consulates around the world.

The party will vote on this bill.

In this way, consuls will be more able to effectively assist our nationals abroad and, in the long run, any citizen of the European Union who will request it. I will come back.

In this regard, I can only support the request of my eminent colleague, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mr. François-Xavier de Donnea, who wants the status of honorary consul to be retained in the regions far away from our diplomatic posts. The tasks assigned to him may be limited, but his presence must be preserved, for he is the only anchor of our most distant nationals.

The recodification of the Belgian Consular Code is a good thing. We can only rejoice.

However, it is regrettable to note that the European Union is experiencing certain difficulties in taking initiatives in terms of foreign policy. The Lisbon Treaty does not confer any competence on consular matters on the European External Action Service (EASO). At present, there is no institutionalized coordination on this subject at European level.

What happens when a European citizen is in a country outside the EU where the Member State to which he belongs is not represented by an embassy or consulate? He is entitled to apply for consular protection from any other Member State under the same conditions as nationals of that State.

Furthermore, measures are taken to further strengthen consular protection of Union citizens. On 14 December 2012, the European Commission proposed a draft directive on consular protection for EU citizens whose embassy or consulate is not represented in a third country. This legislative proposal sets out the necessary cooperation and coordination measures to facilitate consular protection for the benefit of the citizen and the consular authorities.

We hope that this debate, conducted at the level of the Ministers of Justice, can result quickly. In this context, I can only welcome the Belgian initiative that led to the creation of the Schengen House in Kinshasa.