Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-10-Speech-3-169"
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"en.20040310.4.3-169"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank all the rapporteurs and all the speakers for a debate which has demonstrated, firstly, that we really are giving our new Members a new welcome, and secondly, that we agree on where praise and criticism are due. I think we also agree that people in the new Member States have shown a willingness to change, a willingness to go along with far-reaching reforms that some of us might like to see in our own countries.
I am a member of the European Commission, and I have not spoken in relation to any particular country; there is a need for reform in a whole array of European countries, irrespective of who governs them.
I wish to thank the Presidency, which, in close cooperation with the Commission, is driving this process forward, and, where there are things still to be done, is doing them together with us.
Let me make just a few more comments on the discussions this morning. I would like to say to Mr Titley, on the subject of anti-Semitism in Lithuania, that we picked up on the Lithuanian newspaper’s anti-Semitic outbursts at once. It was in fact the Commission that raised this issue in the first place, and the Lithuanian Government has since responded by taking appropriate action.
To those Members of this House who have spoken on the subject of the Roma, I would like to say that this is indeed one of the great unresolved issues in Europe, but that we cannot expect the accessions to produce a solution to it. It will take us at least a generation, if not several, before we can do away with social discrimination against the Roma, but what we did insist on as a precondition for accession was a detailed strategy that would help to overcome such discrimination in all areas.
I would like to respond to Mr Sacrédeus’ interesting comment on Turkey and Cyprus by pointing out that it was the Commission that made the explicit political connection between the Cyprus issue and Turkey’s political aspirations towards Europe and declared that it was hard to imagine us being able to initiate accession negotiations with a country that did not recognise an EU Member State or had stationed troops in it in such numbers as to contravene United Nations resolutions. It follows that Mr Sacrédeus’ appeal ought not to have been necessary, and that was the line we took; that was what led to the Cyprus talks happening now.
Let me conclude by returning to the subject of Romania. It was the Romanian Government itself that attached the greatest importance to the Council recommending a date on which the accession negotiations were to be concluded this year, something on which the Commission took a different view. Our line was that we needed more flexibility here, that this would be in Romania’s interests, and that it would be sufficient for us to conclude negotiations by the end of 2005 in order for accession to take place in 2007. The Romanian Government, however – for political reasons that I can well understand – insisted on 2004 as the date, and so we are entitled to expect it to make special efforts to fulfil all the conditions by then. I am happy to confirm what has been said by a number of speakers, that the warning shot fired by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy produced very rapid and credible responses; I have gained the impression that Romania has pulled itself together and that the process is now on the right track. I cannot do other than encourage the Romanians to continue acting in such a decisive way, and then, I think, we may yet reach our destination."@en1
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"(Interruption: ‘Germany!’)"1
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