Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-11-Speech-2-015"
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"en.20030311.3.2-015"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, speaking in the debate of 18 November 2002 on the Commission’s legislative and work programme for 2003, on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group, I said that I could not see how anyone could be against the political priorities stated, but I added that there was a wide discrepancy between the objectives and the measures taken to implement them, resulting in increasing dissatisfaction on the part of public opinion and the risk that the European ideal itself might be rejected by those who, like myself, want a European Europe. Four months later, having read the long communication from the Commission and heard President Prodi, and speaking on behalf of the GUE/NGL, I would be tempted to say the same thing, except that today’s information document is far more watered down. It is a display of what I would term blind optimism. Worse still, I find it to be extremely dated and swamped with useless, obvious facts. For example, the mandate of the Prodi Commission ends in 2004; European elections will be held and 732 members will be elected; enlargement will take place on 1 May provided that the ratification process is complete.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, world peace is severely threatened and the UN is in danger of losing credibility. The Member States are divided between those that uphold peace and those that are in favour of war, between those that are blindly following the United States and those seeking a balanced European position. The economic crisis and the recession are worsening rapidly, unemployment is increasing everywhere with thousands of people the victims of harsh redundancies, insecurity in all its forms is flourishing to the detriment of the weakest and, in the face of these mortal challenges, the first two of which were raised by President Prodi this morning, the written communication discusses new forms of governance, stability, new social and economic agendas, quality of life, border security and even traffic and registration taxes for private vehicles.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the members of my group are not all pro-Europe, to say the least, but they are realists. The vast majority of them, given that Europe now exists, demand that it should at least be a people’s Europe, that it should be democratic, pay attention to social issues and not be subject to the diktats of the economy, in order to respond to the real problems of European citizens.
I am sorry to have to tell you, therefore, President Prodi, that not only do we disagree with the ideology that underpins your proposals but, what is worse, these proposals, even if we were to accept this ideology, are barely equal to the major issues we need to resolve. That, Mr President, is why, with all the respect that is due to you and that I have for you, I would ask you to review your document."@en1
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