Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-20-Speech-2-472"
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"en.20040420.20.2-472"2
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"Mr President, if I may, I would like to say a few words on this issue, although I do not belong to the Italian Left, because, like many Members of other nationalities and from other groups, such as Mrs Boogerd-Quaak, I have been concerned about this issue.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights states that plurality is essential to the functioning of democracy. What this House has observed is an undeniably increasing unease amongst large sectors of information professionals and large sectors of the public with regard to the information they receive through the media.
The concentration of private media organisations in a few hands and the misuse of the public media by public authorities, by governments, are the two central concerns in this field. So this is even worse when both concerns come together, or when a political position and a business interest in the media coincide.
Community legislation, Mr President, should take account of this need for plurality and should have instruments for actively defending it. This is what this House proposes in the report by Mrs Boogerd-Quaak, whom I would like to thank for her effort and patience.
Mr President, I believe that the Commission and the Member States should study these proposals and accept them or, at least, tell us what they think of them. I believe this would be well received by this House and by the citizens.
I believe, Mr President, that the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, until the day it voted on this report in committee, voted and worked as it has done over the last five years, that is to say, in a reasonable and sensible way, listening – something which I believe is not very common in this Parliament today – listening to each others arguments.
This is going to be my final speech in this plenary, because I have chosen not to return in the next Parliament and I would like to thank the Chairman of the committee, Jorge Hernández Mollar, for the way in which he has led the committee to date and also on this extremely difficult issue.
To return to the issue we are dealing with, I do not wish to end without saying – and this is the fundamental issue – that the citizens, Mr President – and they have demonstrated this in recent days in my country, in Spain – when they believe that information is subject to intolerable manipulation, react. I am therefore optimistic in this area. I hope that the institutions can act in the way the citizens expect us to act."@en1
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