Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-045"
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"en.20031022.2.3-045"2
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"Mr President, the truth is that the Italian Presidency has not had an easy agenda. I am going to refer to three points.
Firstly, the difficult birth of the Constitution. We are impatiently awaiting the proposals which the Presidency—in-Office is going to make in order to try to overcome the outstanding issues in the second half of November and we are glad that we have been told that these proposals will deal with the problem from a global perspective. By global, Mr President—in-Office of the Council, I mean a solution which can affect all the institutions, which can achieve the agreement of all the institutions, and also of all the Member States – some of which have announced that they are going to hold a referendum – and of all the new States – which have also held referendums within another context. I believe, Mr President, that this is an aspect of the problem which should not be avoided.
The second difficulty faced by the Italian Presidency is how to recover the path of sustainable growth and job creation. Mr President of the Commission, growth, yes, but also stability. We are happy with the Commission's proposed growth initiative, according to which infrastructures must play a fundamental role, because it is usually said, Mr President, that when the Europe of infrastructures, the Europe of construction, goes well, the construction of Europe goes well. There is a simple reason for this: the integration of the markets is not just a political or judicial notion but, above all and fundamentally, a physical notion. Hence the fundamental importance of infrastructures, which – being inert systems – make accumulated delays irrecoverable. Either Europe resolves the problem of infrastructures once and for all or it will have to abandon forever its aspirations to become the most competitive area by 2010.
The final difficulty I wanted to refer to in this speech is that of how to restore relations with the United States following the Iraq crisis and following the events of 11 September. I believe, Mr President, that we must place the emphasis on the fundamental rather than on the peripheral. The fundamental thing is a shared history, common values which clash – as our President, Mr Poettering, and others have reminded us – on issues such as Guantánamo and the death penalty, and also our shared passion for freedom. We now have a wonderful opportunity to express the united view of our European Union project at the coming Conference of Donors because – as I had the opportunity to say yesterday in the debate on the budget – the rehabilitation, reconstruction, pacification and democratisation of Iraq is not a responsibility which should fall exclusively to the United States, but to the international democratic community.
Mr President, I said at the beginning of my speech that the Italian Presidency did not have an easy agenda. It is clear, however, Mr President—in-Office of the Council, that without difficult goals no summit is worth climbing. Therefore, Mr President, I would like to wish the Italian Presidency luck and success in the decisive months remaining to it."@en1
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