Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-20-Speech-1-125"
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"en.20031020.9.1-125"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, often in this Parliament – and I will surprise no one by saying this – our debates are not terribly exciting and we address rather complex issues. As Chairman of the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport and having only just left a meeting of this same committee where we were voting without you, Mrs de Sarnez, I should like to say here that it was with widespread, indeed unanimous, enthusiasm that the Culture Committee worked on Mrs de Sarnez's excellent report. To be quite frank, when we saw the Commission document we thought the idea was excellent and we agreed that in some respects the Commission was almost being too cautious.
Firstly, in respect of the budget. It is just as well that we were there to increase it a little. I might say straight away that this Parliament's Culture Committee does not consider the EUR 230 million to be sufficient and tends to think that it will have to be supplemented further.
Moreover, if you think of the world today and the considerable number of large countries who, for reasons of international uncertainty, give the impression of being closed off, the fact that it is precisely under such conditions that Europe should choose to open up completely is of exceptional significance in our view.
In the same way, we wanted to reinforce, consolidate and write in stone how valuable a degree such as the European Union Masters is. The Commission text tended to give the impression of any old studies leading to the award of a little certificate. We wanted to consolidate this qualification, this Master’s degree.
In addition, Mr President, we thought it was very important to tighten up the wording on the learning of two foreign languages in this context. Where the Union's language policy is concerned, we have often protested in this Chamber about those governments who were not making it compulsory to learn two foreign languages in their countries. Some still do not do so. We will exert all the pressure we can in support of this policy and we are pleased to have found an opportunity to do so here.
Finally, I should like to say that opening up European culture to students from throughout the world seems to me to be a wonderful initiative."@en1
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