Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-115"
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"en.20001003.4.2-115"2
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"Mr President, President-in-Office, Commissioner, I am extremely pleased both with the tone of this debate today and with the level of consensus that is emerging among the key groups in the House, a consensus which my Group subscribes to.
The challenge of reunification, even more perhaps than that of enlargement is so great that it suffuses and surrounds every debate in this House: this is why there is such depth and intensity to all our debates, including this morning's debate on our own need to prepare for this extraordinary challenge. To create a common space of freedom, security and of values by free choice is something without a parallel among democracies in all of our history. It is a matter of the utmost importance and yet has curiously attracted very little public attention. When we look at Eurobarometer statistics, we see that 60% or so of those who expressed a view say enlargement is not a priority, while only 27% say it is a priority. Moreover, the statistics are getting worse, not better.
In the largest state of the Union, the Federal Republic of Germany, only 20% say enlargement is a priority. We as politicians must take possession of this debate and not simply leave it to the bureaucracies, for though it is indispensable to discuss the details of the
this is not sufficient to engage the public.
We need a dialogue of politicians and therefore we need to avail ourselves of all the information possibilities that Commissioner Verheugen spoke of in his very reflective and elegant speech today. We need, as Mr Hänsch has said, to provide ourselves with information about the cost of non-enlargement, not simply in terms of finance and budget, but of security as well as, of course, socio-economic measures.
It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the American President, who once said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Much of our debate about fears about enlargement is based on exaggeration, but in order to confront the populists who exaggerate, we must connect with popular politics through reflection. We need the Commission's help here, because even though we have the will, we sometimes lack the ammunition.
In respect of the principles involved, we of course support differentiation; of course, we support the principle of equality that there should not be a Europe of different classes of citizenship. My Group has 23 visiting MPs, our "virtual MEPs", sitting in the gallery now: I welcome all of you to this debate in the House.
Finally, the critical thing now is to move to substantive negotiation, and we are making that important step. The critical thing is not to allow frustration to grow among the candidates – that they are always in the anteroom but never quite in the chamber. That is what we must accomplish in this debate, that is the result we must pursue. People joke that after the collapse of the Berlin Wall enlargement is always just five years away. We must show they are wrong. Let us take the first step in that direction during this mandate."@en1
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