Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-14-Speech-4-138"
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"en.20001214.4.4-138"2
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"Mr President, I will naturally begin by reiterating our solidarity with the Members from the Popular Party, while at the same time – although I find it difficult to say – pointing out that our democratic response today in the face of this latest murder should be to overcome our grief and continue working in this House, as we are at the moment.
Europe and its institutions cannot remain on the outside. There is considerable and understandable alarm, the consequence of a perverse double combination of stubbornness and incompetence: The stubbornness of those people who refuse to alter their initial position and the incompetence of those who are unable to vigorously defend the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of European citizens who live in the area.
I am not being alarmist. It would be alarming if we failed to act immediately in this situation. Every day there are statements to the effect that there are reasons not to authorise the repair of the Tireless in Gibraltar. Let us not wait any longer. Let us accept the situation once and for all and take the submarine, with every possible safeguard, to a British port which fulfils the requirements for its repair, before it is too late; before the Tireless ends up wearing all of us citizens and Europeans out.
Once upon a time there was a British nuclear submarine called the Tireless. While sailing through Sicilian waters, back in the month of May, its nuclear heart showed worrying signs of deterioration. Those in charge of the submarine tried to have it admitted into a hospital, classified as suitable for providing treatment, of which they were coproprietors, at that time a NATO base. But the director of the hospital did not authorise the admission.
The submarine sailed on, infecting the waters of the Mediterranean on the way, until it arrived at an agreed hospital called Gibraltar. There, showing themselves to be fully in charge, they parked it.
In order that it might be admitted, they said that the illness was not serious. When, by means of the medical dispatch which they distributed in the country where the owner lived – that is, by means of the British press – it was discovered that the illness was serious, instead of changing hospitals, they changed the classification of the hospital.
A patient was admitted to a first aid centre and, when it was discovered that it did not have flu, but a serious illness, a painter was employed to change the sign on the door and put ‘Hospital’ where before it had said ‘Health Centre’.
However, that strategy was not enough to prevent all the patients and their families from finding out that they had admitted an infectious patient and from knowing that there was a risk of catching the disease.
Then the lies and manoeuvrings began: the lies – or silences – of the person who had admitted it and the lies and silences of the person in charge of health in the area. Because, while the owner of the submarine told us something different every day, the person in charge of health in the area did whatever he wanted. He even told us jokes about the yellow submarine or about jurisdiction in the area.
To top it all, it was at that time that the population most directly affected discovered that, some time before, that same country which owned the submarine had, for ten years, deceived all Europeans about mad cow disease.
Ladies and gentlemen, this situation cannot be allowed to continue. Citizens’ associations, social organisations, local authorities and autonomous communities have asked both this Parliament’s Committee on Petitions and the Commission to intervene and protect them."@en1
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