Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-21-Speech-4-042"
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"en.20000921.2.4-042"2
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".
Mr President, there were two monsters in Ancient Greek mythology which killed and swallowed people, Scylla and Charybdis. The two monsters in Europe today are terrorism and racism. And these, unfortunately, are the subject of our debate today.
Odysseus overcame both monsters, but he needed ingenuity, persistence and courage. Today, the political, democratic leadership of Europe has to play the role of Odysseus. Sixty years ago, we lived through one of the worst wars in the history of mankind. The idea behind the European Union was to create institutions which would guarantee peace and significant steps were taken in the years which followed.
Unfortunately, the clouds of racism are still hovering over Europe. There are numerous dimensions to the fight against racism at European level. One such dimension is the EU’s basic policy of deepening its policies, i.e. strengthening social cohesion in Europe and ironing out differences, and another is its enlargement policy, i.e. strengthening countries which have problems.
As far as anti-racist policies in particular are concerned, I should like to refer to quite specific policies and measures. In 1996, the Council approved a joint action on judicial cooperation between Member States on questions of racism. We are about to enter the second stage of this joint action.
The Treaty of Amsterdam is a really important weapon in Europe’s institutional arsenal. Articles 29 and 13 allow us to adopt quite specific policies. Article 29 allows us to combat racism and xenophobia by cooperating in the area of justice and security, in order to create a single area of freedom and justice. In Tampere, the policy for measures in this sector was evaluated and decided and we are now moving more towards measures relating to this sort of crime via the Internet.
Secondly, two directives have been proposed on the basis of Article 13; the directive on racial discrimination was voted through by the European Parliament and the Council in record time, a mere six months, and is now part of European legislation. The purpose of the second directive is to combat all forms of discrimination in the workplace and this will be debated during the French Presidency. Of course, laws alone are never enough, which is why the Commission has proposed an anti-discrimination programme which allows governments, non-governmental organisations and local authorities to work together on innovative policies and to exchange best practices in the fight against racism.
The European monitoring centre in Vienna is an important institution, the purpose of which is to provide objective, reliable, comparable data on racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism and to act as a basic design tool at both European and national level. The monitoring centre has already drawn up studies on the extent of racism and on manifestations of racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism in various Member States, in order to analyse their causes, repercussions and results and has examined examples of good practices which are working in certain Member States. The monitoring centre is setting up a coordinated network of non-governmental organisations and organisations which can work together at European level in order to address questions of xenophobia. Similarly, it can make recommendations to the Community and the Member States in connection with policies which should be pursued and it has already been working with the German Government.
Finally, the Strasbourg conference is a very important event. The Commission is also involved from the point of view of theoretical and political proposals. We have already submitted two documents incorporating all the experience and proposals on how to combat racism at Community level, together with our experience in matters of education, training, research and policy for young people in order to address these matters. There is financial support for the conference as regards non-governmental organisations because we believe that they can play an important role, over and above the role of governments and, of course, we are negotiating for support for the involvement of non-governmental organisations in the regional conferences to be held in Chile, Senegal and Iran.
Honourable Members, we must never forget that the European Union was constructed in order to prevent a recurrence of the racist atrocities which we lived through 60 years ago. Policy is based, at European level, on an institutional arsenal which we strengthened with the Treaty of Amsterdam but in which there is still room for further effort, by creating structures to study and analyse this phenomenon and support governments, by supporting a European network between various agencies so that they can increase public awareness and, of course, by exchanging and supporting national policies on education, the mass media, policies for young people and information at national level. However, we must say, and this is important, that all these policies, this entire philosophy is based on one principle: zero tolerance in Europe towards racism and zero tolerance of the reason for any operation based on racism."@en1
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