Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-044"
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"en.20010404.2.3-044"2
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"Mr President, it was not only courteous of the Swedish Prime Minister to come here, but also rather courageous. As so many speakers have said, on the economic front, Stockholm was a great disappointment. Once again Heads of Government could only agree to set theoretical deadlines for ministers to liberalise markets in the future, rather than actually set the seal on agreements that should already have been made or reach those agreements themselves.
To coin a phrase, the liberalising talk is 'all spin and no delivery'. We are witnessing serious under-performance by standards which Europe's socialist leaders have set themselves. It is all a far cry from the spirit of the single market when the centre right ran Europe. One of the major failures of the Stockholm Summit was in the foreign affairs field. With the great events taking place in the world, it was as if the Stockholm Summit was ignoring them. For example, the General Affairs Council on 19 March decided once again not to table a critical motion in the United Nations sub-committee in Geneva, dealing with human rights abuses in China. Until 1997, every year the European Union did so. Now the socialists are failing, it is business as usual.
Even more important – as Mr Poettering told the House earlier on, and other speakers have referred to this – last night the PPE-DE Group heard Yelena Bonner describe the situation in Russia today: Mr Putin came to Stockholm, Mr Persson gave him a cheque for EUR 100 million, the very next week Mr Putin begins yet another crack-down on the media. There is now no single independent media channel in Russia. This is a scandal. I am very disappointed indeed that Mr Persson did not take the opportunity this morning to criticise President Putin for the way in which he is repressing the media in Russia, the way in which democracy is being rolled back. This is our great neighbour to the east. We must deal with it on a practical and political basis, but with frankness and determination. God help us if the socialists had run Europe during the cold war."@en1
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