Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-023"
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"en.20020313.2.3-023"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I would like to make reference to the general speech by our group’s Chairman and seize on a few, perhaps just small, details. Although we have to keep an impartial view of all applicant countries, this must not mean that the various decisions they made prior to accession negotiations or their special circumstances arising from their natural resources or history should be completely ignored. I am mainly alluding to the situation regarding Estonia, which is close to Finland.
It is unreasonable that the Union is demanding that the country’s bituminous shale-based production of electric energy, which is unable to compete in a freely competitive market, should swiftly become the object of free competition, while, at the same time, France, and to some extent Germany also, are still, after fifty years, obstructing the liberalisation of their own energy markets. Fortunately for it, Estonia is still not even part of the European electrical network. The other special feature of Estonia concerns its milk quotas, which the Union wishes to fix at a basic level equal to that of the start of the last decade, when Estonia – rightly or wrongly – decreased its production. Thus, present volumes of production – very important for Estonia’s countryside, which is still dependent on agriculture – will not fit within the framework of the quota. It is these sorts of decisions that will, however, determine the attitude of the farming population and the people of East Estonia to EU membership in the referendum.
The question of Kaliningrad always comes up as a key issue in any talk about enlargement, the northern dimension and our relationship with Russia. I am a very strong supporter of Russian cooperation, but I am very pleased to hear Commissioner Verheugen remind us that Kaliningrad is a part of Russia, and that there can be no special negotiations on it with regard to enlargement. Russia is also mainly responsible for proposals on cooperation and participation in financing. Neither is Kaliningrad – and this is something I want to stress – a crucial element in the problems and opportunities of the northern dimension, which lie elsewhere. They are in Murmansk, in the St Petersburg region: close to the Finnish border."@en1
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