Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-174"
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"en.20001025.6.3-174"2
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".
The fact that the outermost regions exist is tied up to a large degree with colonial history. In the Middle Ages, those regions and their people did not belong to Europe, and even today, they are not really considered to be European. Even before the nineteenth century, Spain, Portugal, France, England and the Netherlands had already conquered substantial colonial empires and Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Italy tried to follow in their footsteps for a short while. This colonial era has now passed. The suppressed peoples have fought for their freedom, or were given their independence as a preventive measure, because the former rulers had no appetite for a war of liberation which they would end up losing. All that the EU Member States have left outside Europe in terms of territory are small or sparsely populated sections of their former colonial empire.
The EU Member States deal with their outermost regions in very different ways. Spain and Portugal consider their islands in the Atlantic as remote regions. Those islands can, given their present composition of population and their relative proximity, be considered normal parts of their countries. Similarly, the Netherlands and Denmark each have two regions in, or on the other side of, the Atlantic, but those areas are expressly not included in the European Union. France, on the other hand, owns overseas departments in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean. This proposal has confronted my group with a difficult choice. On the one hand, we want to support disadvantaged areas in and outside of Europe so that they achieve the same standard of living and level of amenities that is now current in the EU. That is a question of solidarity. On the other hand, we have serious doubts as to whether or not former colonies should be declared outermost regions. A case can be made for the Spanish and Portuguese islands, but not really for the more remote regions. These should ideally be given the same status as the current ACP states which, after the same kind of history, have ended up in a different type of relationship with Europe.
In assessing the amendments, my group has tried to tread a middle path between the most far-reaching demands of those protecting the interests of the outermost regions and the indifference towards, or even repugnance for, this topic felt in Member States which cannot relate to it in any way. In any case, we have, however, subordinated our repugnance for this topic’s colonial backdrop to the interests of those living in the regions concerned."@en1
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