Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-21-Speech-3-104"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20040721.6.3-104"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I shall not be taking the same tone as the previous speaker. My problem is not so much the Council as the policy that the future Commission President will follow.
My group has appreciated the readiness with which Mr Barroso has submitted to this crossfire, this barrage of questions from Members who were not among his closest political friends. This capacity for dialogue is a real quality, but it does not of course hide the well-known differences there are between us over the essential directions of European integration.
Economically and socially, Mr Barroso is a liberal. He has amply demonstrated that in the exercise of his national responsibilities. Even though the choices he made as Head of the Portuguese Government do not automatically mean he will take identical decisions in the European offices for which he is proposed, they clearly show where his preferences lie. They are revealing.
I would have liked Mr Barroso to have told us about the lessons he has drawn from his national experience for his European mandate, if he receives it. The severe cuts in public expenditure, including on education, in Portugal, for example, or the uncompromising application to the hospital sector of management criteria commonly used in private enterprise. Some have described it as shock therapy. If it was a real shock to the population, I think the truth is that the therapy itself is more than debatable for the economy of a country that has undergone a severe recession and is suffering from a chronic lack of investment in human resources despite these being the key to modern development.
What is your assessment of that experience, Mr Barroso? Do you think that is the way forward, or should we close our ears to the liberal siren song?
Up until now, we have been less familiar with Mr Barroso’s big international policy options, apart from one far from minor one which projected him on to the world stage; I am speaking of the famous Azores Summit of March 2003, of sad memory for us.
I have already had occasion to emphasise what the question of war and peace meant for our group and I will not return to it. I will say in more general terms that in my opinion for all the major positions of responsibility within the Union we need men and women who are prepared to consider far-reaching challenges to the severe trends that are plunging Europe into crisis before our very eyes and making it helpless in the face of many of the world’s problems. We are not suffering from an excess of lucidity in this regard but rather from a cruel lack of critical intellect that means we do not have a vision for the future that is capable of motivating us.
The world needs Europe, but a different Europe. We know that six million – yes, six million – people died of Aids, tuberculosis or malaria last year, that global warming is advancing much faster than the measures devised to contain it, not to mention that those measures are not being adhered to, that there are a billion people without jobs, that one human being in six has no access to drinking water, that war is brewing in the Middle East, continuing in Chechnya and bathing Darfur in blood; it is therefore our duty, at whatever level decisions are taken in Europe, to see further than the market and further, too, than mere Atlantic solidarity.
That, I think, is the challenge Europe has to face today. We really are not up to it. That is why, if we refuse to put our confidence in Mr Barroso tomorrow, that will not be a vote against an individual, it will be the expression of a universal call for change."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples