Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-19-Speech-2-129"
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"en.20021119.2.2-129"2
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"Mr President, this morning, I think that we indeed witnessed an historic moment, as all my fellow Members have said, when we welcomed our counterparts from the candidate States. I should like to raise a minor point, namely that of the interpreting. Instead of 11 official languages, we now have 20. This is a considerable step forward. We must congratulate the interpreting services, which have provided interpretation despite the testing technical conditions. As a native Catalan, it is my hope that, in the future, my language, which is spoken by 10 million European citizens, may also be recognised in this Chamber. I wanted to make this comment whilst we are examining the Brok report.
With regard to the aforementioned report, one of the Copenhagen criteria stipulates that the Member States must respect minorities and national minorities in particular, and highlights some of the progress which has been made by the candidate states. This must be welcomed.
The report neglects to tackle some of the difficult points, however. For example, I know that in some of the candidate States, administrative cuts have been implemented in such a way as to dilute the national minorities, whereas in other candidate countries, conditions are being imposed with regard to the formation of political parties in such a way that minorities cannot form one. And, lastly, there is the problem of the Beneš decrees which unjustly exploited these minorities in 1945, a crying injustice, which is still an issue today and which must one day be rectified. It is true, Mr President, it is true that, before we start giving lectures, we should take a look at ourselves. When I say ‘we’, I mean the Member States. For example, could a State which today refuses to ratify the European Charter of Linguistic Rights join Europe? This is a question that we could ask, like many others, and that is why I believe that we must assess the Copenhagen criteria with a degree of indulgence and throw the doors of our Europe wide open."@en1
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