Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-20-Speech-4-143"
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"en.20031120.5.4-143"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it so happens that the Commissioner saved himself with this excellent opening speech when he said what we actually wanted to hear. This is how a clever and experienced Commissioner obviously operates, but thank you, Neil Kinnock, for what you just said.
Nevertheless, on that day, 29 September, when the Directorate-General for Press and Communication sent off a letter to all the Info-Points, it was as if a lump of ice had been dropped in the bath water. It rocked the boat and people panicked. One obviously cannot act this way, and all of us here are proof of that.
These Info-Points have only been set up in recent years, and the Commission has itself made the excellent remark that these centres had an extremely valuable contribution to make as they had a good deal of experience and could work flexibly and very close to civil society and the people, and that they were a vital tool in the European Union’s information and communication strategy, representing the EU in the field. Excellent. You yourself provided evidence of this as the Commission, and I believe that in the future too you will ensure that there are information points in the field.
It has already been mentioned here that the need for information is growing. The impact of enlargement will create a continuous need for information in all Member States. People have to be informed about the results of the Intergovernmental Conference, in other words the Constitutional Treaty. This is a document more than 300 pages long, which so far fewer than 2% of the citizens of the Union have read. The parliamentary elections and in particular the attempt to increase people’s interest in voting in them are of course massive tasks, which the points may happily be saddled with.
Standards of monitoring have to be improved. If it is a matter of some points operating slightly dubiously, I would like the Commissioner to comment, but clearly that cannot be allowed to affect the entire network – those sections which have acted properly.
I am very much in favour of the idea that next year the Commission will seek a better, more workable and more easily controllable solution. The need for information is growing as more and more issues are decided upon here, Europe’s central point, and I therefore support the Commissioner in his reforms."@en1
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