Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-27-Speech-3-175"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20020227.12.3-175"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President – I am delighted to see you perched so high up there, if I may say so – Madam Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank the rapporteur, Per Gahrton, for the many efforts he has made to try and bring this report up to an acceptable level. He reminded us very clearly in his introductory remarks that we are not there yet, that we still have a very long way to go. Today, as he said, the South Caucasus is a powder keg; as for the North Caucasus, the less said, the better. Today in the South Caucasus there are the unresolved questions of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Adzharia and so on. All of these issues have been smouldering for years. In thirteen years of transition from Communism to democracy, during which time the European Union has invested a billion euros in the region, I do not believe we can claim that European policy in that part of the world has been a resounding success.
As Mr Gahrton said, the underlying question concerns these nations’ future prospects, and the Commission in particular – with the complicity of the Council, as usual – is refusing to offer any enticing political prospects to these countries and seems to reject the view that the only criterion for membership of the European Union is the fact that the people of a particular country feel European at heart. One need only travel to Georgia, Azerbaijan or Armenia to ascertain that the people of these countries feel European, and so we have no reason whatsoever to deny them the prospect of a European future, which we have been doing in countless ways.
The other extremely serious problem, and one for which President Prodi bears the brunt of responsibility, is the failure of the European Union to safeguard its fundamental interests, the fact that it signs agreements, month after month, year upon year, with the Russian Federation. As for the pipelines, all of them have to pass through Poland to reach Russia. No energy-supply lines can pass through the Caucasus. If it were not for the Americans, we would not even have the little pipeline that passes through Azerbaijan and Georgia. This is the sort of policy that breeds dependence rather than interdependence. Commissioner Nielsen evidently believes that the Caucasus is a region with a population density akin to that of Greenland or the Antarctic. That is not the case. The Commission is forgetting that the Caucasus region is the doorway to Central Asia, which will be the chief supplier of the energy of tomorrow. This is the prospect that the Commission and the Council are presenting to us, but we in this Parliament could and should be calling on the Commission to take a decisive step, to make a bold political gesture by inviting these three countries to become candidates for accession to the European Union, to accede in ten years’ time, once they are ready. They certainly could be ready by then if this prospect were set before them now. As things stand, the only prospect is that the powder keg of which Per Gahrton spoke is likely to set off a few more explosions."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples