Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-14-Speech-3-142"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20030514.7.3-142"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I welcome the Commission communication. I confess that I was initially somewhat surprised that this paper bracketed together countries like Libya and Belarus in a single communication. These two countries, like the other countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean or in eastern and south-eastern Europe, have precious little in common apart from their relative geographical proximity to the European Union. That is why I am pleased that each country is to be dealt with individually. The Presidency has made an announcement to that effect and the Commissioner talked about action plans. As something has therefore been said about practically all our neighbours, for the sake of completeness a sentence could have been added about Norway and Switzerland, as an example, at least in the case of Norway, of just what can be done without signing up to actual membership.
I find wording such as the heading ‘Different countries, common interests’ somewhat unfocussed. Their agendas really are too different. It has been said that there are countries that have membership prospects and others that do not. If we want to, we can demand a lot more from neighbours who also belong to the Council of Europe: for example, in return for granting trade preferences, we can make demands in the area of human rights. However, we should not make offers that we cannot honour. We cannot offer all neighbouring states the four freedoms as the Commission does in Section 3 of its communication, and I quote: ‘the prospect of a stake in the EU’s Internal Market and further integration and liberalisation to promote the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital’. Fortunately, the Commissioner did not repeat that quotation from the communication as such. However, the communication almost gives the impression that we are offering an ‘à la carte’ Europe. I have to say that I cannot identify any political consensus for granting North Africa and Russia, for example, freedom of movement in any foreseeable political future. I therefore call on the Commission to draw up pragmatic and realistic action plans that neither raise false hopes nor over-commit the EU."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples