Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-16-Speech-4-150"
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"en.20000316.3.4-150"2
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"I want to congratulate our rapporteur, Mr Haarder, on the quality of his report on respect for human rights in the European Union. I support the general philosophy underlying the document, which aims to consolidate European policy with regard to civil and political rights, but also to the economic, social and cultural rights of EU residents.
Yet I would also like to draw my colleagues’ attention to two requests made in the report, which I find problematic. Paragraph 19 of the report, concerning the protection of national minorities, and paragraph 20, calling for the ratification of the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, pose real problems.
We certainly understand the spirit of the rapporteur’s observations on the need to protect national minorities: it sends out a strong message to some of the candidate countries, especially the Eastern European ones, whose nationals do not all enjoy fundamental rights. Parliament firmly rejects abuses of fundamental freedoms throughout Europe, as the Haarder report emphasises. But we regret that it alludes to the rights of ‘national minorities’, an expression that is far more restrictive than the universal concept of ‘human rights’.
Furthermore, we support the idea of an indivisible political community, within which ethnic origin is not eclipsed but regarded as being of secondary importance. The Republic cannot recognise
‘minorities’ or ‘communities’: in its view there are only autonomous and free citizens with equal rights.
In view of our convictions we must also express strong reservations about paragraph 20 of the report, which refers to the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Everyone is free to use one or several languages of his or her choice in addition to the language of the Republic and everyone has the right to learn them at school.
. The Charter is too vague in this respect, which entails the risk of encouraging the formation of regional communities; that would pose a threat to the unity of the Republic but also, in the long run, to the cohesion of the Union.
I will, nevertheless, vote for Mr Haarder’s report because of its quality and its underlying philosophy."@en1
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"But the fact remains that this is a choice and not an obligation"1
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