Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-31-Speech-3-030"
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"en.20040331.1.3-030"2
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"Mr President, the criminal attacks in Madrid clearly show that Europe has become the direct target area of international terrorism. This puts the European Union in a new position. The political world must take account of this, in both the short- and the long-term. Unfortunately, the Heads of State or Government are confining themselves exclusively to the short-term, to exaggerated activism, which at the end of the day produces only an illusion of security rather than the real thing, and we also run the risk of ending up in an Orwellian Big Brother state in which the basic rights of citizens are increasingly sacrificed. It is not simply that – as we are also currently experiencing in Germany – each day ‘a new security policy idea is run through the roost’. Benjamin Franklin, the father of the American Constitution, was right to say that a person who is prepared to surrender his freedom to win security will lose both. It is not possible to prevent terrorist attacks by military means, that is to say, by war.
My main criticism of the resolutions of the European Council relates above all to its failure to understand the basic truth that combating terrorism is one of the European Union’s strategic tasks. This is because terrorism and criminality can only successfully be combated if political action is taken to address their causes in the breeding-grounds of the prophets of hatred and violence. Poverty, exploitation, despair and loss of rights and contempt for religious feelings and cultural traditions are what prompt terrorism and violence. So I say that the best prevention and the best protection against terror, violence and war is a just international order. Europe must therefore develop a convincing policy, one that seeks a peaceful and just balance of interests between the rich north and the southern hemisphere and puts an end to the plundering of the so-called ‘third world’.
The immediate tasks include the withdrawal of the USA and its allies from Iraq, the peaceful resolution of the Middle Eastern conflict, and also an embargo on European arms exports. Such are the long-term strategic tasks that the European Union must set itself in the struggle against terrorism."@en1
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