Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-21-Speech-4-012"
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"en.20000921.1.4-012"2
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"Mr President, I am convinced that the vast majority of Basque people, given the opportunity, would thank the French Presidency of the Council and the European Parliament for echoing their deep desire for peace and democratic coexistence.
Ladies and gentlemen, since the first democratic elections took place in Spain in 1977, the Basque Country has emerged as the European region with the highest degree of self-government. Since then, the Basque people have had the opportunity, on six occasions, to elect the representatives for their autonomous parliament and violent and radical nationalism has never won the democratic support of the Basque people at the polls.
However, since our Constitution was approved, enshrining the democratic rights of the people of Spain, ETA has killed 804 people in my country and left over 2000 widows and orphans all over Spain, mainly in the Basque Country. Their victims were men and women from all walks of life, including, of course, those who dedicated part of their lives to fighting the dictatorship. As part of the struggle to banish fear, these days in the Basque Country and in the rest of Spain there is a popular, civic and peaceful backlash against the tyranny of murderous terrorism.
In my view, ladies and gentlemen, this debate must take up and broaden this popular call and encourage the people of Europe to work together to create a great pact for freedom. We must be able to make the people of our countries of origin realise that the fundamental principles on which our common coexistence rests are threatened whenever anyone, in any part of Europe, is killed because of their beliefs. Only the united stand taken by democrats can ensure that the perpetrators of violence are marginalised as well as those who, owing to the permissiveness generated in our democracies, protect, induce, justify or tolerate terrorist acts of any kind.
I hope my message is clear. We all doubtless agree that dialogue is a decisive factor in the democratic process. There is only one exception to this golden rule and that exception is also an essential component of democratic systems. In a democracy, ladies and gentlemen, the voice of those who are intent on destroying it and who use criminal methods to achieve their ends must be silenced by the law, by the Rule of Law. Democracy must never bow to those who at the same time, and this is something I stress, at the same time, insist on holding it to ransom, gun in hand.
I am convinced of the personal and political commitment of Commissioner Vitorino and the College of Commissioners to this undertaking, something that they have demonstrated on several occasions. I should therefore like to ask the Commissioner to use his exclusive powers of legislative initiative to propose new measures to enable us to make progress as regards European cooperation which, as you yourself pointed out, is still insufficient. One of the most effective measures in the fight against terrorism is in fact the European arrest warrant, which would mean that terrorists served their sentences in the country where they committed their most heinous crime.
I would like to end, Mr President, by sparing a thought for those Europeans most affected by fear, in other words, the victims of terrorism and their families. Today, thanks to this debate, they are a little less alone."@en1
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