Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-02-Speech-2-065"
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"en.20020702.4.2-065"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, listening earlier to the long list of tasks your government has been faced with over the past six months, I, like Mr Prodi, thought that Spain had acted with great energy and wisdom in what is a very short space of time.
The European Union, under your Presidency, has continued to discuss issues that are fundamental to its future, such as the necessary reform of the Council with a view to enlargement, the establishment of a common asylum, immigration and integration policy, and the reinvigoration, finally, of the Barcelona Process for improved mutual understanding between the countries of the Mediterranean. I, in turn, can only tell this House that I welcome the progress made in all these areas, and congratulate you on it, Mr President-in-Office of the Council.
Having said this, I am sorry that, under the same presidency, the transatlantic link between the United States and Europe has become increasingly distorted, such that the US would be solely, or at least in an increasingly isolated fashion, responsible for handling the crises that continue to threaten global stability and peace in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Kashmir and elsewhere. Europe, meanwhile, would be sidelined into managing humanitarian aid missions and post-crisis reconstruction, due, Mr President, to the failure of the governments of the European Union to understand that their professed desire to participate in crisis prevention and management is incompatible with the continual reduction in their defence effort.
In discussions on the subject, everyone is united in demanding better spending through more balanced and intelligent distribution of tasks between players in the European weapons industry. This will be nothing more than a pious hope until we decide to establish the beginnings of a European defence budget, perhaps initially restricted to the field of research and development.
We need better spending, Mr President. Do you not also think we should spend more when the time comes if we do not, as Europeans, wish to resign ourselves to the role of a mere servant to US military power?"@en1
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