Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-12-Speech-3-196"
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"en.20050112.10.3-196"2
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"Mr President, it is of the utmost importance that we should, from time to time, deliberate about the state of transatlantic relations. The past few years have done nothing to improve our relationship with the United States. This is undoubtedly largely attributable to the US intervention in Iraq, but there are also other problems, and one that springs to mind is the unacceptable pressure brought to bear by the US administration, and the American President himself, in favour of Turkey being allowed to join the European Union.
I do not think it does transatlantic dialogue any good if one party interferes in the other’s internal policy matters. Having said that, we should also admit that there is in this Parliament a certain kind of primary anti-Americanism, which certainly does not make things any easier. Europe and the United States share the same values, democracy, human rights, and the free market economy being among them. These are often referred to as universal values, but they are, in fact, Western, or rather European.
We also share a number of common enemies. In the first place, there is the threat of Islamic terrorism, even though opinions differ as to how to address this problem. In this respect, we should not remain fixated too much on multilateralism versus unilateralism. In practice, multilateralism often means that we hide behind bodies such as the United Nations, so that, in practice, little or nothing ends up being done.
We should not blame the Americans for our weaknesses in the military field and in the field of external policy; we have only ourselves to blame. We could take a leaf out of their book. Just think of the tsunami in South-East Asia. American military were very quickly on the ground to provide practical aid. The European Union was present in the form of Commissioner Michel who came to take stock of the damage and to share out a few bags of rice in front of the television cameras. The contrast was harrowing and spoke volumes."@en1
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