Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-06-12-Speech-3-151"
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"en.20020612.5.3-151"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, no one, particularly not the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, is calling into question the historic opportunities linked to enlargement. It is exciting, it is fantastic, but this window of opportunity also implies a need to carry out reforms. If we do not do so for enlargement, we shall be placing Europe at risk. We shall run the risk of producing a chaotic Europe which will place enlargement at risk.
In addition, Mr President, do not tell us that the principle of direct payments to agriculture is fair, because it is an unjust principle and it must be reformed. That does not mean that it is not necessary to help farmers, but it means that we must have structural aid for rural development, that we must follow a policy of sustainable agriculture, something which we have not done for years. We failed to reform agriculture in Berlin. We failed. We failed to carry out the reforms. That does not mean that we are against enlargement, quite the contrary, but we must make the granting of aid subject to certain social and ecological conditions, which we are not doing.
That does not mean that we should spend less money. We had a financial framework in Berlin, and we reduced it. We could invest in the countries which are applying for accession, but we have not done so, because of the selfishness of the rich countries of the European Union such as Germany, France or Spain. Everyone says that they are in favour of enlargement, but when it comes to paying the price of solidarity, political selfishness rears its head. We are not telling lies here. These are the difficulties which you will come up against in Seville, the same difficulties that we encountered in Berlin on the subject of fisheries.
The thing that annoys me, frankly, is that everyone says yes to enlargement, but when it comes to paying the necessary price of solidarity, in other words the price of implementing reforms to the way in which the European Union functions, then we are much more pedestrian than in our historic, Sunday-best speeches. I do not want enlargement to be a political undertaking reserved for Sunday-best speeches, while on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we pursue a policy which is opposed to enlargement. That is why I say, and why I defend the idea, that in the window of opportunity described by the Commissioner, there is no mention of the need to complete the necessary reforms of the European Union so that the enlargement of the Union to twenty-seven countries can be made to work.
That is what we, the Greens, are defending, because we are keen supporters of enlargement, and keen supporters of internal reforms to the European Union, so that enlargement can work. That is our task, and we have not yet completed it."@en1
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