It is my pleasure to welcome you to Paris in this year marking the bicentenary of the Civil Code and I salute this initiative by the Chief Justice of the Cour de cassation.

As you know, justice is now at the heart of the building of Europe. In the Community context, the common judicial area is daily becoming a reality through the adoption of legislative texts, but also by closer and closer cooperation between judges. Of course, the texts have to be aligned in certain cases and the intense legislative activity of the European Union is a response to these demands.

But I am also a firm believer in direct, pragmatic and speedy contacts between judges which daily help to build the Europe of justice.

Judges and prosecutors get to know one another, and also learn to understand the judicial systems of their neighbours, together finding ways of cooperating.

Europe encouraged the creation of liaison magistrates so as to promote this cooperation and France has since developed a network of six liaison magistrates in Europe. More recently, the creation of the European Judicial Networks in criminal, civil and commercial matters has enabled all judges in all our countries to quickly and effectively identify their opposite numbers when dealing with transnational cases.

During the discussions on the future European Constitution, France, in association with Germany, has put forward new proposals for accelerating the development of the common area. We are in favour of the creation, in stages and on the basis of the existing structure of EUROJUST, of a European Supreme Court, for only at the European level can we effectively combat the most serious forms of international crime.

As I was saying, the development of the common judicial area does not rest solely on harmonising legislations and procedures. The mutual recognition of legal decisions is also a great step forward. This mechanism means that the legal cultures and traditions of all States are respected and minimum standards guaranteed. Above all, it facilitates the everyday lives of our fellow citizens and our companies by overcoming the complexity of our various procedures.

But the corollary of this principle is a particularly rigorous standard as regards the quality of justice. This is why I wanted the European Union to create an ongoing quality control system for justice in our different countries so as to guarantee the conditions for the elaboration and implementation of the legal decisions that will have to be applied without any monitoring process in our respective countries. This ongoing control seems to me the essential condition of the mutual trust at the root of the European area of justice.

Yet Europe is not limited just to the Community sphere, for the habit of working together developed in Brussels also spills over into bilateral relations. Hence, we – the French - have agreed with Germany to seek, as systematically as we can, to bring our legislations into line, outside any initiative from the European Union.

Lastly, Europe does not stop at the borders of the Union, even in its now enlarged form. The regulatory work of the Council of Europe and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights both have great influence in our countries, as well as on the Union itself.

For all these reasons, I welcome the creation of your Network of Presidents of European Supreme Courts, as the exchanges it will promote will contribute to the consolidation of a common legal culture. When the Union is welcoming ten new members, an enormous stride, I think it is beneficial for a forum such as your own to promote in-depth exchanges between representatives of markedly different legal and judicial systems.

You share any number of common topics for discussion relating, among other things, to the application of Community law or the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court, or to the workings and the policies of your institutions. In my view, these topics could profitably be explored further.

This task is an important one and I wish you every success in your efforts to make it a reality.

Thank you.