Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-26-Speech-3-145"
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"en.20051026.17.3-145"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President of the European Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I address you, Mr President of the European Council, quite deliberately as such and not as ‘Prime Minister’. While it is thanks to the office of Prime Minister that you hold the presidency of the European Union, you are there not to defend British interests alone, but rather those of Europe as a whole, and it is by the way you do that over the coming weeks and months that we shall judge you.
There is now talk of a fund, and our group asks that we take another, very careful, look at that. At a time, many years ago, when I was involved in the Committee of the Regions, there was restructuring going on in the steel sector, and Europe helped with that – not by means of maintenance subsidies, but by means of educational measures. It is of course possible to envisage something similar being done for those industries that find themselves in difficulties as a result of deregulation and globalisation, which would involve these funds being used to run retraining schemes. The money to do this is already there in the European Regional Fund, and it is for that reason that I ask that we take another, closer, look at this option.
That there is a need for flexible labour markets is not a matter of doubt. There is also a need for bureaucracy to be reduced. Thank you, Mr President of the Commission, for putting before us a good proposal as to how this might be done.
I ask you, Prime Minister – not in your capacity as Prime Minister but as President-in-Office of the European Council – whatever you decide tomorrow, not to take any formal decisions. But, whatever you might prepare to decide, in working groups for instance, you must include the European Commission. We will not allow an intergovernmental process to decide the future of Europe; we want the institutions of Europe to be involved in the whole process of the development of Europe.
I regret to say that my speaking time is up. You are a good communicator – everyone knows that. If the results of your presidency at the end of 2005 are equal, in terms of quality, to your communications skills, then we will be very satisfied. We will then give our final answer in December or January. I wish you much success, which, if you achieve it, will be success for us all.
This debate is being held at the right time and in the right place. Tomorrow, you and the Heads of State or Government will be meeting in a palace, in – as befits such as they are – distinguished surroundings. I hope that the name of Henry VIII is not a bad omen and will not have a baleful influence on the future of Europe. While it is common knowledge, Mr President of the European Council, that neither you, as Prime Minister, nor your party, belong to my – our – political family, I would like to give you a great deal of credit for being here today, here in the European Parliament, among the representatives of the European people. It is tomorrow, then, that the Council of Heads of State and of Government meet, and that gets the sequence of events right: first, the European Parliament in Strasbourg and then Hampton Court Palace on the outskirts of London.
We wish you success, Mr President of the European Council, in re-establishing trust among the 25 Heads of State or Government. Your presence here today does indeed help to build trust, for all three European institutions are present. I will also say by way of appreciation that, tomorrow, the President of the European Parliament will be present throughout the day, and that too is something new. It ought, in future, to be taken as read that the President of the European Parliament should take part in all the meetings of the European Council. If you can make this a well-founded tradition, then you will be doing European democracy some good.
We wish you success in making clear, tomorrow, our desire for a strong Europe in one world, by which I mean that we may not detach Europe from the world; on the contrary, this Europe of ours must help respond to the great problems of the world. One thing, though, is clear, and that is that we would be able to cope with none of these major problems were it not for the European Union. Europe may well not be the solution to all the great problems, but we will be able to solve none of them without the concerted action of Europeans in the European Union.
Globalisation affects not only the economy, although that is what everyone talks about. Globalisation is, of course, an economic process, but, at its heart, it is about the fact that we are one world, and that represents a challenge – intellectually, morally, culturally, politically and, of course, in economic terms as well. If handled in the right way, globalisation has something very positive about it. What we are and what we do is underpinned by human rights and human dignity. Countries like Cuba or the People’s Republic of China will, in future, no longer be able to say that what they do – if anything – about human rights is a merely domestic matter. On the contrary, what globalisation signifies is human dignity for everyone on this planet, whether they be Americans, Europeans, Chinese or Cubans. Human dignity is shared by all; that too is part of globalisation.
Nowadays, everything is interconnected. This morning, a colleague told me that the Commission, which already works very well with the WTO, could well become even more involved in it in terms of its presence on its committees. I cannot pass judgment on that, but that is what I have been told. The fact is, though, that what goes on in the WTO is not just about economics, and I would like to give an example of what I mean by that. I have made many visits to Morocco. If you walk through the streets of a Moroccan city, you will see a lot of young people, and that is of course a very good thing, but, if these young Moroccans are denied opportunities, if we do not open up our market, even to agricultural products – that can be done only step by step rather than overnight – then these young people have no opportunities in their own country, and they start knocking on the doors of Europe, as we see them doing in Ceuta and Melilla. That is why the World Trade Agreement is a profoundly human issue rather than just an economic one, and in addressing it we must take our political and moral responsibilities seriously."@en1
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