Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-15-Speech-3-204"
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"en.20030115.11.3-204"2
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"Mr President, I am glad that the Greek Presidency has returned after an absence which had attracted some criticism. Having looked up which of our Members have spoken so far, I find that, of all those who have spoken on this subject, I am the one from furthest south. That is something that we perhaps ought to organise differently in future, as we should give attention to the regions in a more even-handed way.
When, in 1997, President Ahtisaari was the first to mention the Northern Dimension as a concept, many of those present did not at first know what to do with this mere form of words. The word has subsequently acquired a great deal of substance, and we have already heard that the second action programme is being planned, and the priorities chosen for it are also, in my view, the right ones. My fellow Members have, of course, listed the various subject areas more than once.
My personal experience of all these topics – including in earlier years when I was involved in the area of Baltic cooperation – has, unfortunately, led me to the same conclusion that Mr Suominen has already reached, that being that we have, in the meantime, offered Russia, sometimes grovellingly, a whole bouquet of issues along with concrete proposals, but often find the Russians unwilling to do the business. In all this, the benefits to Russia are obvious when one considers the potential for increasing export capacity or our willingness in the environmental field – which is also of course in our own interest – to dig deep into our own resources in order to provide for improvements in Russia.
I would like to say something about border management. I hope that the EU, the three Baltic states, and Poland, even before these latter four join the EU, will engage in detailed talks with Russia in order to make it possible for their border-crossing procedures, from 2004 onwards, to run as smoothly as those we find at the crossing points between Finland and Russia, which have already been modernised. I believe that many working in the field of exports and imports would see their costs for goods and services fall substantially. I also hope that, as regards the combating of criminality at these borders, the Russians …"@en1
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