Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-02-Speech-2-255"
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"en.20011002.10.2-255"2
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". – Madam President, I welcome everybody here again tonight. I see a good number of familiar faces. I wish to pay tribute to my shadow rapporteur, Mr Harbour, who again is attending a late-night sitting with me. We probably spend more nights together than we do with our respective wives.
I should also like to pay tribute to a number of people who have worked on this report, not just within the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market but also within the Commission and the Council. It was not a difficult conciliation but it was successful and I was very pleased at the outcome. I should also like to give the thanks of probably about a third of the population of the European Union to Parliament, for I am anticipating that the vote tomorrow will go the right way.
There are something like 35 million registered disabled people within the European Union; we have 120 million elderly people. The two groups are obviously not mutually exclusive, but they make up about a third of the population of the European Union. The outcome of tomorrow's vote will very largely decide what their quality of life in the future will be. For years now people with disabilities have not been able to get around the towns and cities of the European Union as they should; they have been trapped for too long in their own houses. If this directive is adopted tomorrow, it will open up that door. It will be one small step towards freeing a lot of people who, as I said earlier, have been trapped. I would like to convey their thanks to Parliament.
I realise that some of my colleagues on the right of this House have had difficulties with this directive, mainly because of its technical nature. I fully understand and appreciate that. However, I would ask them at this late stage to consider what we are doing, because if this directive is adopted tomorrow, it is something that everybody in Parliament could be proud of, because we would be improving the lives of the citizens of the European Union. For once we would be making a difference. Too often we stand up in this Chamber and talk about various great plans, schemes and motions, etc. and they do not impact on people's lives. Here is a small thing that does impact on the lives of the European citizen and it is something we should all be proud of.
I understand my colleagues on the right will be abstaining tomorrow. That is unfortunate but it is, at least, an improvement on voting against in the second reading. I would ask them, however, to look at this again and cast their votes in favour, because all along I have tried to leave out the technicalities and have concentrated purely on the policy and philosophy of getting people with disabilities mobile again. That is an aim and objective I think we would all agree with.
In that respect, I have really not much more to say, because this has been discussed at length. The Commissioner is well aware of the contents of the report and probably could recite them as well as I could.
Finally, I should like to thank very much all those who have helped draft this report and who tomorrow will help to adopt it."@en1
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