Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-04-Speech-3-046"
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"en.20021204.3.3-046"2
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"Mr President, you will recall that when we had our great debate with the accession countries in Strasbourg, I finished my contribution by quoting an English saying that there is many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. I warned that we should not celebrate prematurely the end of this process because there was still a long way to go and of course I was right. It now seems that although we think we are close to agreement, we are actually a long way from agreement and there is a very real prospect that we could lose everything. We should be clear on that.
If Copenhagen ends up with endless rows over highly technical issues conducted in ten parallel negotiation sessions, it does not take a brain surgeon to realise the whole process could easily seize up. For once, I disagree with Commissioner Verheugen. I think if we miss Copenhagen, we will not miss it for a week or a month or a couple of months, we will miss enlargement for a whole generation. As I have said before and I will say it again, it is now or never. This is the opportunity we have to seize.
I welcome the brave attempt by the Danish presidency to put an extra EUR 1 billion on the table in order to clear the decks so we do not have these complicated negotiations in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, in doing so, particularly a couple of weeks in advance, they seem only to have encouraged some of the applicant States to believe that this is just one more stage in the negotiations and quite frankly we have to be clear that it is not. This is not a constantly elastic process. At some point we must say no. Berlin and Brussels cannot be breached. The moment we break budget discipline, we open a whole Pandora's box which is liable to bring the whole project collapsing to the ground.
We also must be clear that this project is so important that we are not prepared to let any one country sabotage the whole negotiations. If any one country wants to hold out until the last possible moment, they do so at their own risk and not at the risk of all the other accession countries, because we must be prepared to agree as each country is prepared to agree.
Equally, I must urge our leaders to ask themselves a simple question before they go to Copenhagen. What will they do in 20 years' time when they are sitting with their grandchildren on their knees and their grandchildren say: ‘What was your real role in the great disaster when Europe failed to grasp its own destiny? What did you actually do?’ Are they really going to turn around and say: ‘Well, actually, we could not do it because we were not sure if Baltic sprats were big enough for our nets. We could not do it because we could not quite agree on the right amount of sheep premium or the exact sugar quota or exactly what sort of portfolio a Commissioner should have for two months’? Are we really going to say that? Because it is going to sound very lame. Let us think of the big picture and remember that the money we are giving to the accession countries represents one thousandth of the GDP of the European Union. The entire EU budget is only two thirds of what the British Government spends on social security alone. We are actually talking about what are minor issues in the global picture of things. Let us not lose sight of that.
Concerning Turkey, I would say that we must say to this new government, which is like a breath of fresh air in my opinion: you must meet the Copenhagen criteria. We want you to meet it by such and such a date and if you do we will open negotiations. But let us kill off once and for all this idea that Europe is a Christian project only. I represent Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoists, all religions, and I am not prepared to say to them: ‘The European Union is not for you’. This is the message some people in this chamber are giving out and we must kill that off."@en1
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