Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-13-Speech-2-349"
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".
Mr President, Mrs Ždanoka, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank the European Parliament and especially the rapporteur, Mrs Ždanoka, for an excellent report.
We have an opportunity here to discuss a topic very close to my heart, which is the fight against discrimination and support for equal opportunities and diversity. The right of individuals to equality before the law and to protection from discrimination constitutes a basic right which is an essential precondition for the proper functioning of any democratic society, and we are all aware of how this right can help to increase economic and social cohesion in our countries and thereby also our prosperity.
The goal of the Community is on the one hand to ensure the uniform application of the law in this area and on the other hand to back effective policies for fighting discrimination and upholding equality in cases where the law is not being applied in a satisfactory manner. As you yourselves have already emphasised, there are a whole range of structural obstacles preventing the achievement of a more just society. The aim of our initiative is therefore also to change attitudes and behaviour. I am pleased that your report to a great extent supports the approach taken by the Commission. I noticed that you drew attention to areas where progress was needed, and advanced some interesting suggestions as to how such progress might be achieved.
Your report in the first place emphasises the importance of collecting data. A certain amount of progress is essential if we are to improve our understanding of discrimination, enabling us to propose effective measures and especially to monitor the way they are implemented. The Commission is pressing for this and at the same time taking steps to ensure that the law is enforced in the area of protecting personal data. As the Commission stated in its framework strategy, a handbook on the extent of discrimination will be issued at the end of 2006. A conceptual framework will also be developed soon for measuring progress in the fight against discrimination and evaluating the statistical data that are available both at a Community level and at a domestic level. There is, generally speaking, nothing in the Community’s legal basis to prevent the relevant data from being obtained.
Your report also emphasised the need to reinforce positive measures in the fight against discrimination. The Commission greatly respects your comments and has already requested a group of its legal experts to draw up a paper on the positive measures currently being applied in the Member States. The report also stressed the importance of multiple discrimination, and with good reason. This topic deserves greater attention. We very often underestimate the number of people that are exposed to it. For this reason I have requested that a study be produced, the aim of which will be to improve understanding of the causes and consequences of multiple discrimination.
There promises to be a major boost for our anti-discrimination policy from the forthcoming European Year of Equal Opportunities. I hope that by the end of 2007 more European citizens will understand the social and economic benefits that diversity can bring to us, and that they will be more aware of what rights they have.
Finally, your report requested that a new legal instrument be put forward which would cover all of the reasons for discrimination, as mentioned in the framework strategy passed in June last year. The Commission has begun a far-reaching study into the suitability and operability of the new measures which are intended to supplement the existing legal framework. Until we have the results of this study the Commission will direct all of its energies towards monitoring the implementation of existing directives by the Member States, in the interests of the highest possible levels of justice. In this context the Commission will of course take all the necessary legal steps that the situation demands.
Ladies and gentlemen, I look forward to your debate with interest."@en1
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