Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-10-Speech-3-156"
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"en.20040310.4.3-156"2
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"Mr President, this House has always welcomed the accession of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe; we always spoke up for the people in these states who wanted their ticket to enter the European Union. This fact would make it illogical to call for the suspension of Romania’s accession negotiations; it would send completely the wrong message. The opposite is true: what is needed is not for the negotiations to be broken off, but for them to be stepped up. We have to make it clear that we will now work even harder with all our Romanian partners to conclude the outstanding chapters and to resolve the country’s problems. That is the message that we must send to Romania today and when we vote on the report tomorrow: we will help you, but you must do the work in your own country yourselves; it is you who must fulfil the Copenhagen criteria.
It is indeed the case that Romania has a lot of time to make up; for almost ten years in the 1990s, the reform process made no headway at all. It has to be acknowledged, though, that some chapters have been driven forward at a faster pace in recent years, and that is something that has to be supported. We think it wrong that the report should state, in item 1, that Romania’s ‘becoming a member in 2007 is impossible’. This has to be expressed in more positive terms: it is still possible that Romania will become a Member State in 2007, provided that the problems with which we are familiar can be dealt with, provided that there is an independent justice system, that corruption is combated, that the administration is efficient and that minorities are integrated.
We have to be careful not to set the country up as too much of a scapegoat. I see that, in items, 17, 18 and 19, we call for teaching to be provided in minority languages; I would be a happy man if people in other countries, including Member States of the EU, were able to use their own languages in schools, libraries and theatres in the way in which Germans and Hungarians can in Romania.
The reference to child marriages in item 19 has to be qualified. The practice of children being forced into marriage is not universal in Romania, but it does occur in some Roma families.
It will be important for my group to see whether our amendments will be adopted tomorrow; if they are, we will be able to vote in favour of the report. If they are not, we will have problems with it."@en1
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