Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-022"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20050907.2.3-022"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we agree on the fact that terrorism is the enemy of humankind, and we are concerned that after the London attacks the matter is back on this Parliament’s agenda, partly because in June it had been discussed in a number of reports and also in connection with the subject of data protection.
The fight against terrorism must not be associated with the fight against illegal immigration or with asylum policies, as it has been by Mr Clarke today. Drawing such a parallel is specious and, at a pedagogical level, dangerous: does anybody seriously think that terrorists arrive in Europe on board makeshift boats? In my opinion, victims should not be turned into killers: migrants are the weak link in a system that sustains terrorism, but they are certainly not the cause of terrorism.
Moreover, if the extent of tragedies can also be measured by the number of deaths, then terrorism should not even be considered a priority for the European Union: the real tragedy in Europe is the number of migrants who drown in the Mediterranean Sea because of our laws and practices that turn them away. The number of those who go to their graves in the Mediterranean is a thousand times greater than the number of deaths caused by terrorist attacks!
A serious omission hangs over this debate: Mr Clarke and Mr Frattini represent the two European countries that have most contributed to the war and the military occupation of Iraq. Their analysis is wrong if they do not see the relationship between the war and terrorism. Their analysis is wrong if they do not see that the war and terrorism fuel each other, just as Islamophobia and Islamic fundamentalism fuel each other. The phenomenon can be seen not only in Iraq. According to a study recently published by a UN agency, over the last three years, that is since the military occupation started, opium production in Afghanistan has grown exponentially: the drug is the main source of funding for the terrorist organisations.
Terrorism will not be beaten by war or even by this obsession with security, so proposing an Orwellian system of surveillance of Europe’s citizens is unacceptable. Data protection is a means of making security prevail over freedom and justice. Stefano Rodotà, a respected lawyer, has stated that data protection is like torture for the third millennium: the aim of both is to extract information. I fully agree with that view and that statement. Furthermore, it has not yet been shown that data protection helps to defeat terrorism, nor do I believe that the two examples that the UK Presidency put forward in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs are sufficient.
Finally, I believe that certain initiatives require the consent of Europe’s citizens and that it will not be easy to build a consensus on this issue. I do not think that the European Union should try to get out of its crisis by using this distortion of security.
The European Union will only succeed in becoming a strong and institutionally credible political force if there is popular consent for its model of society, and I believe that that is the lesson to be learnt from the French and Dutch referenda."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples