Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-04-Speech-3-342"
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"en.20001004.14.3-342"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today we are debating a report that gave rise to much controversy when it was discussed in our committee, all sparked off by the term subsidiarity. But at a time when we not only have a surplus of audiovisual offerings but also excess consumption of these offerings, we cannot retreat behind the word subsidiarity. As politicians, we simply have a responsibility, in all the areas in which we act, to protect young people from that surplus. At a time when we are witnessing so much violence, hatred and intolerance in all our countries, we surely have to ask ourselves where it is coming from. Now, I cannot say: it all comes from television. But no doubt much of it can be traced back to the excessive consumption of these television offerings, some of which incite to hatred and intolerance, including intolerance towards other nationalities. So we must give serious thought to how we can check this. We have a responsibility towards minors!
Subsidiarity is to be welcomed. And we want to preserve it; but I beg you, let us not hide behind it. It is our job to do something, and indeed we have already tried to introduce this kind of protection of minors with our first “Television without frontiers” directive. I am thinking now of Mr Hoppenstedt, who fought for the V chip. But what can we achieve with that kind of technological barrier? Not much; children usually know how to handle it better than adults, which means we really must think very seriously about how to remedy this situation.
We do not intend to replace anyone who is doing a good job at national level, but we do want to introduce common criteria and minimum requirements at Community level and propose rules that help people effectively to implement measures to protect minors in their country.
Of course I also think that we are not in a position, either as politicians or as technicians, to tackle this problem on our own. Far more important than all this, of course, is the role of the teachers and the parents, and handling this medium correctly. Television and the Internet have to be learned and, of course, also taught. So what we are doing today is just a small part of the job that society as a whole has to perform. I believe we must bring up our children to enjoy this medium in the right way and to get parents to encourage their children to watch suitable programmes and disregard the less suitable ones. That is why we should do both, do our job as politicians and urge society to do its bit. Unfortunately, I cannot endorse the Liberals’ demands. I find them too liberal and not really geared to the interests of the minorities we are considering here."@en1
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