Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-032"
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"en.20020313.2.3-032"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, Commissioner, I am very grateful to the two introductory speakers for their references to the great vision and also to the problems that remain to be solved. There are still a number of stumbling blocks that we have to remove, and not all the forces in the Member States, or in the candidate countries – to whom reference has already been made – have been very helpful in this.
The discussion of the Beneš decrees is certainly one of the stumbling blocks. Historians certainly judge these decrees in different ways, but I am obliged to the Commissioner for pointing out that the only issue of relevance to accession is that of whether they still to this day have discriminatory effects, that is, whether the legal systems contain provisions that go against the
and are still of relevance to negotiations today. Provisions of this nature must be removed along with their effects; I am very glad that this is something on which the Czech and Slovak governments now agree. We will not be helped to build a new Europe either by revising the Beneš decrees or by cementing them into the EU's treaties. Rather than getting bogged down in nationalistic squabbles, we should not lose sight of the vision of a great Europe.
The 2004-2005 enlargement round will be the cause of much satisfaction in many of the candidate countries, but there will be disappointment in those that remain outside. It is worth considering whether we ought to give these countries not only greater financial help with the implementation of their reforms, but also a realistic – and I emphasise realistic – provisional date for their accession, subject to their making progress in the relevant areas. There is great fear, particularly on the part of Romania and Bulgaria, of being put on the shelf. Consideration will have to be given at the same time to adding new countries to the list of candidates, and I am at present thinking only of Croatia.
With Turkey, on the other hand, we have to consider how to grant what it has asked for, describing this as a compensation for its help with the Cyprus issue, help that has, though, not yet made itself clearly visible. Here, too, it must be clear that a date for the beginning of negotiations with Turkey cannot be named in isolation from fulfilment of the Copenhagen political criteria. In light of the fact that the borders of a future Europe will become ever more visible, we must also, I believe, even now slowly start thinking about how even closer political and organisational ties can be forged with those states that I believe will remain outside the European Union – Russia, for example, or many of the Mediterranean states. For Europe does not consist of the European Union alone; there are other states with which we want to build up new and strong cooperation, with potential for the future, in order to maintain a strong European Union."@en1
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