Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-16-Speech-5-037"
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"en.20000616.3.5-037"2
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"Mr President, I wish to thank Mr Turco and my colleague Mr Sousa Pinto for their important reports which show the essential work the agencies are doing through their investigations into how drugs actually function, their effect, the impact on society and which describe what help and improvements can be made. This is especially important and significant when we look at the whole question of enlargement.
A previous speaker spoke very eloquently about the evil of drugs, and Mr Beysen referred to the tobacco vote a couple of days ago. There is an element of hypocrisy here, because half the House voted against having stronger measures on tobacco advertising and – I choose my words carefully – there are many Members in this House who are regular users, to different degrees, of alcohol, which is a very powerful drug. I am not teetotal, nor do I wish to be sanctimonious about this, but we have to be realistic about the situation that exists in Europe today. That must be our starting-point.
We also have to be realistic about what we want from the Centre. I take issue with Mrs Boumediene-Thiery and Mr Cappato on some of their remarks about the Centre as it functions at the moment. For the work of the Monitoring Centre in Lisbon to be effective, Member States have to cooperate fully. As Mrs Banotti has just said, the agencies have to be involved. The Lisbon Centre has to have reliable, accurate information and be able to monitor and involve all the different agencies in as many countries as possible.
Mr Blokland said that we should not include Turkey. If you look at the whole question of drugs and the issues of enlargement of the European Union, Turkey is an intrinsic part of the supply routes for drugs coming into Europe. I know the Turkish authorities are looking at ways of improving the situation and so are the applicant countries and those which would like to be applicant countries. They want to address this problem. In many cases they do not have the civic structures and other organisations in place to properly enforce some of the regulations we would like and some of the monitoring that would take place.
So we cannot exclude one country because we do not like it very much: we have to open our doors to as many countries as we can and encourage the work that is being done. Of course, there is not enough being done. There needs to be more progress. But if we just sit back and say that everything is fine or just say "no" to drugs and that people should not use them, we are not accepting the situation as it is; we are not giving the tools to those people who want to improve the position.
I look forward to another debate, as Mrs Banotti has said – perhaps in a year's time – when we can actually start to pinpoint some of the progress that is being made.
I congratulate Mr Sousa Pinto and Mr Turco."@en1
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