Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-02-Speech-2-203"
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"en.20011002.8.2-203"2
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"Mr Crowley, I had always believed that a gentleman would not wish to know what two other gentlemen had discussed privately. If you want to change that, then that's up to you. I will neither confirm nor deny anything in this matter. Stony silence is the only way the Commission can avoid being involved in internal political disputes.
I will, however, quite gladly say something about the actual substance of your question. The president of the Czech parliament and I have for many years been able to talk intimately and in confidence with one another. The most recent, and, I might add, entirely private, in-depth conversation took place only a few days ago. The president of the Czech parliament did not mention in this conversation the event that you have taken as the basis for your question. But it means much to me that Mr Klaus, in the many, many conversations we have had, has always made it clear that he, himself, and his political friends desire and support the Czech Republic's accession to the European Union. That he occasionally expresses other views, views differing from those shared by the majority in Europe, is well known, but he is quite entitled to do so, and we, as democrats, must accept that.
My final point must be that it goes without saying that the European Union has the right to tell candidate countries what it accepts and what it does not; to point out that certain criteria are required to be met for accession negotiations to begin and to be concluded, and that the most important of them is the political criterion according to which a country must guarantee that it is a democracy under the rule of law, respecting human rights, protecting minorities and sharing the values and objectives of the European Union.
It has come about that a country seeking membership has been told, on the basis of this assessment: ‘We cannot start negotiating with you about accession, because you do not meet these political requirements.’ The question you have asked, whether political intervention of this sort occurs, must therefore be answered very clearly in the affirmative. It is precisely what the Copenhagen criteria require."@en1
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