Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-05-Speech-2-124"
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"en.19991005.8.2-124"2
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"Mr President, I would like to express my agreement with the comments of the rapporteur, Mrs Kinnock. I wish to congratulate Mrs Kinnock and the negotiators who have brought this agreement into being. I would also like to congratulate everybody because finally we have secured, after an enormously long process, the agreement instrument which the European Union is going to sign with South Africa and which must give renewed and definitive impetus to relations between the two parties.
I have said that the journey has been a long one. At times, it has seemed interminable. There have certainly been some complex issues, some of which, like the issue of port and sherry, continue to raise difficulties which we hope will be resolved in the coming days. But it is also true that there have been times when we have seen behaviour on the part of the European negotiators as well as certain Member States which has been excessively bureaucratic, defensive and at times nit-picking. We have also been concerned to see at times, on the part of our South African counterparts, a tendency to backtrack and to revive questions which we thought had been resolved, all of this causing the process to be delayed more and more.
Mr President, with the necessary will on both sides to positively resolve any remaining loose ends or interpretations, we are arriving at the point of the parliamentary procedure for approving a rigorous text which is full of hopes and expectations. This is an agreement which has taken into account diverse interests, interests which are often difficult to reconcile and which, nevertheless, seem to be providing acceptable responses for all sides. It is an agreement which, while safeguarding and providing opportunities for European interests, must above all contribute to the economic stability and progress of South Africa as well as its political and democratic consolidation.
Mr President, with the signing of this agreement and the support which it lends to the South African process, the European Union is acting coherently. It is acting coherently with regard to its duty to defend the interests of its Member States, coherently with regard to the principles of social equality and progress which we claim as our own, coherently with regard to the type of world which we wish to build together, with more balance and more solidarity, but also coherently with regard to the actions which many of us and many of our co-Europeans, for four decades, have maintained in the effort to put an end to apartheid while dreaming of the establishment of a South Africa with a regime which provides liberty and dignity for all South Africans. It would have been unforgivable if, when South Africa has dismantled that odious regime, when the South Africans have made history and shown an example by bringing about an admirable reconciliation, successfully overcoming the always difficult transition from a civil war and a dictatorship, the transition from having the profile of a freedom movement to the establishment of a pluralist, democratic and constitutional State, it would have been scandalous if, when the South Africans have not betrayed our trust in their conduct, we Europeans were not able to rise to the occasion and were to betray the trust which South Africa has put in us.
Mr President, perhaps the thing that most pleases me about this agreement is the fact we have moved from rhetoric to reality and the European Parliament, which has supported and closely monitored the negotiation process, providing impetus and acting as a stimulus, should today commit itself to applying the same energy to the monitoring of its implementation and its results."@en1
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