Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-09-16-Speech-4-016"
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"en.19990916.2.4-016"2
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"Mr President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, I should like, first of all, to warmly thank our colleague, Doris Pack, for her commitment and the firm stand she has adopted and also for her willingness to compromise on issues. We have therefore also fully supported her amendments. This Chamber proves in fact to be very united in its desire to repudiate the Council’s inability to be educated on these questions. Incidentally, we can hardly educate them in fact because they are not actually here. I hope that the Commission is on our side even if Commissioner Kinnock could not say so as clearly as I am doing. For we are not concerned here with who is right, we or the Council, but rather with together learning what mistakes have been made. The citizens of our Member States cannot accept there again being even the possibility of money being squandered. Just like our citizens, we are prepared to spend money, but it must be spent efficiently.
I should like to make four points. Firstly, we have agreed – and I am very happy about this – that the Agency is to be in Pristina, but – and here I differ somewhat from Mrs Van der Laan – that Thessaloniki is definitely the appropriate location for regional co-operation organised at a higher level and for the reconstruction of the region as whole. It is a question of all the peoples and all the countries in this region co-operating with each other, and that can certainly and unambiguously be better organised from Thessaloniki than from Brussels. This division of responsibilities is therefore certainly a division which we fully and completely support.
Secondly: for a single Agency, two management committees are planned, each with the 15 Member States represented. What is the sense in having two management committees for one Agency for the 15 Member States if not that they want to allocate as many tasks to themselves as possible? However, it is not a question of our in fact distributing tasks for the reconstruction in Europe but, rather, a question of the reconstruction being efficient, speedy and well organised, and I hope, Mrs Schreyer, that you will take special care to ensure that the relevant money is spent efficiently and that it does not again benefit the individual Member States and their firms and that you will also, of course, bear in mind the need for supervision by OLAF.
Thirdly: Mrs Pack proposes that all the States in South-East Europe or, rather, the firms from these states can be involved. I must confess that we have had discussions in our group about whether firms from the countries which are not sufficiently willing, or not at all willing, to work alongside us can in fact be involved in the reconstruction. That is, in the first place, Croatia and, in the second place, a country which is still not at all prepared to participate, namely Yugoslavia. We want to look forward and to also give these countries the opportunity to be involved, along with their firms and companies, and we hope that these countries and their governments will also be prepared to take part in the reconstruction. With regard to Croatia, this is a laborious undertaking. We hope that, despite all the difficulties in Serbia or Yugoslavia, there will also be fundamental changes, and for this reason we shall agree to the proposal.
Finally, I should like to return to what Commissioner Kinnock said. We have not become involved in Yugoslavia and, in particular, Kosovo in order to replace one ethnic group with another ethnic group. I certainly understand the displeasure, the rage and, indeed, the hatred felt by many Kosovan Albanians towards the Serbian population. We will not however tolerate and will not accept that another type of ethnic discrimination should occur with people being murdered and driven from their homes.
The European Union must make sure that there is co-operation between all ethnic groups in the region as a whole. That is the European goal which we must pursue with great efficiency. Therefore, my group will also agree to the amendment’s being deferred, because the Council must first do its work."@en1
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