Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-22-Speech-4-037"
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"en.20040722.1.4-037"2
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"Ladies and gentlemen, Mr President-designate of the Commission, Dr Durão Barroso, I wish you good luck. A success for you will be a success for Europe and we need and want every success for the Europe to which we belong. Graham Watson put it very well yesterday when he used an aviation metaphor and said that when we look into the cockpit we do not want to see that there is no pilot, or that the pilot is confused, weak or disoriented. We are looking to you, we have heard you request this House's endorsement and we have every confidence that this pilot will have a firm hand on the controls.
You told us that you want an independent Commission. That is the kind of partner this Parliament needs. You told us that you want a Europe based on solidarity. Those of us who subscribe to the European project know that is a sine qua non. There is no future for the European project if we cannot strengthen its identity as a common project, without emphasising the sense of ownership and without a clear and effective policy of economic and social cohesion. You told us that you want a Europe that is more than an internal market, one that is a Europe of citizens. That is the same Europe that we want to help to build, a Europe that is not limited to its economic dimension, but a Europe of citizens – a people's Europe.
We appreciated what you said in your address yesterday about unemployment and job creation, about combating inequality and about security. I know you and can bear witness to your humanist approach and to your support for the values of the rule of law, but it is important to emphasise that we live in uncertain times, in times when there are quite rightly calls for increased security. Nevertheless, we must avoid exaggeration or fanaticism when it comes to security. Yes, we want greater security, but we cannot accept that it should suffocate freedom. When security stops being an instrument for defending and maintaining our freedom, it turns into tyranny.
When it comes to implementing SIS II – the second generation of the Schengen Information System – as regards border controls and in the areas of asylum and migration, but also as regards judicial and police cooperation, a great deal still remains to be done despite the enormous progress made over the last five years in creating an area of freedom, security and justice.
Mr President-designate, I was pleased to hear you calling for a close positive relationship with this House. The history of our Community records that progress was always made when this relationship was at its most focused. It is a fact that in the history of Portuguese democracy you have been the Prime Minister who has made the most important contribution to parliamentary debate. I would also like to see you become the President of the Commission closest to the European Parliament, Europe's democratic assembly, in the history of our institutions. Let me say one last word about the recent elections: the increasingly low turnout is a symptom of a distance between the public in general and the European project, a distance that we must fight. There is also a great deal to be done in this respect in terms of combining the forces of the Commission and Parliament. There is an urgent need to change the way we communicate, inform and educate. I was pleased to hear you saying yesterday that Portugal may be on the edge of Europe geographically speaking, but that it is nevertheless at the heart of Europe. It will therefore be for us to ensure that our citizens take Europe and this common project to heart."@en1
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