Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-20-Speech-4-179"
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"en.20031120.9.4-179"2
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"Mr President, a few minutes ago, over in the Robert Schuman Room, we presented Otto von Habsburg and Raymond Barre with the Franco-German Paneuropa Prize, and we recalled how, for ten years under Otto von Habsburg’s leadership, this House took debates on topical and urgent matters like this one as an opportunity to fight for Greater Europe, for freedom in Central and Eastern Europe, and for human rights behind the Iron Curtain. Even then, there were many who told us that the work we were doing had no prospect of success whatever, that it was pointless, and that what we were doing would get us nowhere. Today, there are among us observers from various countries – Mr Landsbergis was also at the ceremony earlier – who can tell us that debates like the one we are having today changed the practical conditions under which they were held as political prisoners, and that, most of all, they gave them hope in political terms. Today, too, we are on the threshold of the enlargement of the European Union.
Let that give us courage when we debate Vietnam. It is a topic that we have often discussed, and, alas, the people named in the resolution – some of them important religious leaders, are still in jail; human rights activists are still being suppressed, and peoples are still enslaved. We should, however, recognise that the time is coming when the wind of freedom will blow through Vietnam. We in this European Parliament must not relent in campaigning for human rights and for the freedom of religion, even if there are those who tell us that this is unrealistic and bid us talk business instead.
We are under the great obligation of living up to our tradition and our name as Europe’s Parliament. We appeal to the Commission and the Council not to fail at this hour. Vietnam is an important partner, both in political and in economic terms. As a country, it has suffered appallingly through wars, intervention by outsiders such as Europeans, Americans and the Soviet Russians. Like Germany, it was a divided country; it endured a Communist regime and suffers its effects to this day, but it will be able to become a stable partner to the European Union only when it has become, no longer merely an economic factor, but a free state under the rule of law, a democracy in which freedom of faith and conscience prevail, and we ask you, tomorrow in Brussels, to employ your energies without reserve so that it may become that!"@en1
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