Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-053"
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"en.20001024.3.2-053"2
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"Mr President, I am outlining here a resolution which was approved and discussed last week by the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and I would like to thank the Chairman, Mr Napolitano, who conducted the proceedings and signed the resolution.
This resolution draws the attention of the Community organs and the forthcoming Nice Intergovernmental Conference to the issue of the islands, of island status, or rather the principle that island status as such should be recognised as one of the criteria for Community intervention because of the actual conditions which any form of island status involves for the regions concerned. Anyone who has studied the issue is aware of the mystery of the translations: while the Italian version adopts the principle that island status is one of the valid criteria for Community intervention, the French and other translations express a different concept and the English translation is ambiguous and could be interpreted in either way.
I will not focus on the linguistic issue but I will restrict myself to pointing out – because it is an important, historic fact – that the official version drawn up by the Intergovernmental Conference of Amsterdam, which was, moreover, in French, is identical to the current Italian text. It expresses the idea, that is, that island status is in itself an adequate criterion. In effect, the text which was officially issued by the Intergovernmental Conference – which I will pass on to Commissioner Barnier and to the Minister, should your legal offices not have already done so – clearly shows that this was the opinion actually issued by the Intergovernmental Conference but that it was mistranslated into other languages. I will not continue for there are more powerful arguments than the linguistic argument.
There are sections of the Treaties which establish the principle of cohesion and there is Declaration 30
which, in affirming and applying the principle of cohesion in this context, reads, and I quote the exact wording: “The Conference recognises that island regions suffer from structural handicaps linked to their island status, the permanence of which impairs their social and economic development”. It is not, therefore, on the basis of a number of languages or a number of translations, but on the basis of a fundamental principle of the Charters, of the Treaties, that is, the principle of cohesion, that we call for the islands to be recognised as such, as the possible beneficiaries of specific interventions and specific attention.
Commissioner, Mr President, we are not begging: we are simply asking the Community to allow us to be citizens on an equal footing with the other citizens, not privileged citizens. If, for example, you look at the development chart, you will see that, in Italy, over the past few decades, it has followed the limit of communicability exactly: it has expanded and been extended to areas and regions which were easily linked with those which are more developed and has remained distant from those which, like the islands or other areas, had and continue to have appalling connection problems.
Mr President, I come from a land, an island, which has always had this problem, a never-ending problem – like other Italian islands and, I believe, tens and hundreds of islands of other countries – an island which has always made a major contribution, which has always been firmly in favour of national development and which, today, values European development in addition to and alongside national development. The effects of development, progress, news and communications, however, have always reached that island, as they have reached other islands, years later than elsewhere.
If Europe wants to be something more than merely the scene of the globalisation battle, if it wants to be a complete Community, moving, united in all its components and expressions, towards new progress and new civilisation, we call upon you, not to give us more than the others but to allow us to be citizens on an equal footing with the others. We are not asking for anything specific or tangible; we are not asking for funding: we are simply calling for this principle of island status to be universally accepted, so that the citizens of the European Union can all start the race on an equal footing, with equal chances of reaching the finish line."@en1
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