Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-08-Speech-2-130"
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"en.20030408.3.2-130"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, drug consumption and the drug traffic are among the most terrible scourges of our times. There are few people, if any, in Europe who do not know somebody – a family member, a neighbour, a friend, a workmate, someone close, an acquaintance – who has been through the experience of taking and being dependent on drugs, with the effects that has in terms of personal and social dysfunction, human degradation, deteriorating health, poverty and, all too often, crime and death.
That is why the fight against drugs is still a touchstone of public policy today; for any government, for any responsible state, now is not the time to scale down this fight. The three United Nations Conventions that are the backcloth to the resolution we are debating today and will vote on tomorrow take centre stage in this. They represent the highest point in a position that nobody can deny: the drug strategy will only be 100% successful one day if it is carried on in an organised way, at a truly global international level.
The 1998 action plan of the United Nations General Assembly is another step in that direction, and we have now reached mid-term in the ten-year evaluation period defined at that time. Well, the problem is still so serious internationally that this is not the time to weaken that position or any of its instruments. In recent years it has become fashionable in some quarters to say that prohibition policies, lumped together as ‘prohibition’, have suffered continual failures and that these failures are recognised by the authorities themselves. This is not true! Above all, the push towards liberalisation that people are trying to extract from this is not right either.
First of all, finding areas or levels of relative lack of success does not wipe out the successes achieved or the crucial importance of the international prohibition framework that has been adopted as a global security network; secondly, finding areas of lack of success because we want to improve efficiency levels is not the same as publicising failures in order to inspire and nurture a surrender to this global threat; and thirdly, detecting any failure is therefore only useful if it comes with a serious diagnosis of its causes, so as to strengthen resolve even further at the next stage.
It is not difficult to recognise, then, that the main reason why we cannot yet claim a 100% success rate in the fight against drugs, along the lines set by these three conventions, is that this fight is still not really being conducted in a truly international framework. There are still countries that either openly or subtly operate outside the rules. There are many who put more effort into discovering loopholes and omissions in the framework of the conventions or making new ones than in trying to implement them properly. This report, or rather its explanatory statement, is a good example of just that. There are still countries even in the European Union, such as the Netherlands, for instance, which are trying out policies in a different direction, and one might even wonder whether this calls into question the common security framework in the Schengen area. There are still territories outside the control of state authorities where criminal gangs openly defy international authority. There are still other territories and areas of activity of many different kinds on which many countries take only a weak stand, that is if they do not deliberately turn a blind eye to the illicit goings-on. These are the weaknesses on which we must focus our attention in the run-up to the Vienna meeting on 16 and 17 April. As an informed, responsible Parliament, we must not send the Union’s representatives at this meeting a single wrong sign, a single sign of weakness, a single sign of giving up.
This resolution got off to a bad start. It started with an initiative that in its entirety openly challenges the United Nations conventions and their framework, although it then tries to circumscribe its aims. Next, Mrs Buitenweg tried hard to constrain its content, but she did not erase the original wrong direction taken by the initiative or its risks. Afterwards, during the debates in committee, there were efforts to reconcile different viewpoints and limit areas of disagreement but, despite these efforts, the matter is so sensitive that, as representative of the Union for Europe of the Nations Group, I decided to propose an alternative resolution that could give us absolute political certainty. It is for this proposal that I ask for the House’s support. Any ambiguity in this field will lead to disaster."@en1
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