Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-29-Speech-4-191"
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"en.20050929.25.4-191"2
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".
Mr President, after some debate, our Parliament unanimously agreed that we have to speak out for Vojvodina. This is not about disputes between two distant nations or ethnic groups but about an extremely serious series of attacks against native national communities, especially against Hungarian people. Additionally, these communities are integral parts of European Union nations, such as the Hungarian or Slovak nation, or of nations awaiting EU accession, such as the Romanian or Croatian people. The European agreements also recognise the importance of protecting these ethnic groups, which means that the principle of European solidarity expressly applies to them. It is an offence against the EU itself if in some countries people cannot use one of its official languages on the streets or with their visitors or parents in prisons without being physically insulted. On the other hand, these communities intend to attain their goals with peaceful political means. However, past experience has shown that in the Balkans this method is not as effective and impressive as the use of weapons.
If the European Union wants to avoid the failures resulting from its behaviour in the early 90s, it cannot encourage the punishment of the unprotected. As mentioned in the resolution, Vojvodina has lost its autonomy, and failed to regain it during the five years following the fall of Milosevic, although the autonomy had operated successfully before 1989. This means that a considerable part of the preconditions for a normal rule of law is missing. Therefore there is a great discrepancy between the reports of official bodies about the continuously aggravating situation and incidents and the reports made to civil organisations by the people affected. As far as human rights are concerned, we have learned that the manner in which the people suffering the attacks judge their situation and react to insults is more important than the manner in which these incidents are reported by the official bodies which have completely lost the trust of the minorities.
According to the resolution and taking into account the political responsibility of the European Union that I had pointed out in February this year, not only the European Parliament but also the Commission and the Council must react and make clear to the Serbian leadership that this situation cannot continue. With regard to this, I had suggested that the High Commissioner for Foreign Policy should look into the incidents taking place in Vojvodina as well as the causes of those incidents; also, the English Presidency should see the reality at last, and the Commission should call the Serbians to account for the lack of preconditions for a rule of law – and not only on paper but also in reality. The responsibility of EU bodies is also considerable because we have been made to believe that we are going in the right direction just because certain favours have been granted in exceptional and individual cases, which in themselves are not a bad thing. No, I believe that instead – after analysing the motivations of each of these serious incidents – we should force Serbia to provide a future for minorities living within the Serbian community. Despite the one-sided and good-intentioned messages, it would be an invitation for further crimes if we increased the amount of support provided from the EU budget, opened our agricultural markets and started accession talks against our principles. We should not allow ourselves to be blinded by institutions existing only on paper and polished reports – instead, we should wipe the blood of our very nations from our faces and prohibit further bloodshed. Reconciliation after aggression has always resulted in tragedy, especially in the Balkans."@en1
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