Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-21-Speech-3-058"
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"en.20040721.2.3-058"2
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"Mr President, at long last we see JP the NP in the EP. I should really like to warmly welcome the President-in-Office of the Council to the European Parliament. In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Balkenende has appointed himself as the man of standards and values and, in Europe too, he is keen to seize upon the Presidency as a means of having a debate on European standards and values, which I welcome. I just hope that the debate does not turn out to be a vague and insipid discussion. My group would be in favour of measuring asylum policy against the yardstick of decency. For example, the Dutch insisted that the European directive on asylum procedures, which the Justice Ministers adopted in May, should allow asylum seekers to be deported before the final outcome of their appeal procedure. If that were to be the case, they could follow the appeal procedure via video conferencing, provided, of course, that they had not, in the meantime, been put into prison in their country of origin. That would be as good as useless and would also be completely at odds with international standards. I can say that my group will be proposing to the European Parliament that this directive be nullified before the European Court of Justice.
I do, though, also want to congratulate the Netherlands Presidency. I have, at any rate, understood that countries where referendums will be held about the European Constitution have been asked to keep those dates as close to each other as possible. That is really an excellent initiative, but it would be even better if an actual Europe-wide referendum were to be held. I would therefore ask the Netherlands Presidency in any case to make the necessary arrangements. An important advantage of the Constitution is that the Council of Ministers’ legislative meetings will from now on be held in public, something about which I am delighted. It is also absurd, of course, that at the moment, laws are still being adopted behind closed doors. There is absolutely nothing that stops you from introducing public access today. My group would therefore urge the Netherlands Presidency to throw open the doors, allowing citizens to follow the discussions and their governments’ voting behaviour from today.
On a final note, I would like to mention the Stability Pact. It becomes inevitable that the Stability Pact’s future is at risk. We need a smarter Pact that is less fixated on the annual budgetary balance and, instead, makes greater use of long-term indicators, such as public debt and pension duties. The Commission has already tabled some suggestions in this connection, and it remains to be seen whether the Dutch Government will take decisive action in this area. I do indeed hope that it will."@en1
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