Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-20-Speech-2-032"
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"en.20060620.6.2-032"2
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"Mr President, I have to tell Mr Harbour that appearance and reality are often not the same.
I wish to thank, above all, the staff of the various ministries, who have done an extraordinary amount of work and really have made a great deal of progress possible. I hope that you will be able not only to keep the best of them, but also to find more for them to do.
In my first speech, Mr Federal Chancellor, I raised with you the issue of minorities in Carinthia, which is a European problem, and I am much obliged to you for coming up with a proposal that constitutes a considerable step forward. I hope that it will also be possible to put this proposal into effect, and that eventually everyone – not least those who live in this province on the border with Slovenia – will recognise that, in Europe, multilingualism and diversity are winners rather than hindrances.
There is no contradiction between the need for us to promote this multilingualism and this diversity in Europe and the need to make progress with the Constitution and move the constitutional process forward. I am very glad that a firm commitment has been made to this. I am all in favour of enlargement, but if we are to take it further – and there are those who are already, today, acting as if Ukraine is going to be a Member State of the European Union within the next few years – then it also has to be ensured that Europe is capable of sustaining such an enlargement. It is those very persons who want this to happen who must make it their business to ensure that we end up with a constitutional process that also results in a definite strengthening of the European Union, for this constitutional process is not an obstacle to future enlargement, but rather the precondition that it should happen at all.
I would like to say something else about Turkey and Croatia. I am very glad that we have made a start on the negotiations. Where Croatia was concerned, that was long overdue, but, as regards Turkey, let me – as one who has always argued in favour of negotiations being commenced with that country – make something clear: as Mr Schulz has already said, our expectation of Turkey is that it should actually discharge all those obligations to which it has committed itself, and that includes the recognition of Cyprus and the opening of harbours and airports.
I am, of course, also in favour of the Greek Cypriot Government, that is to say the Government of Cyprus, doing everything in its power to pave the way for the Turkish-speaking population to share in a single state and hence in the European Union. If both sides – the governments in Nicosia and Ankara respectively – really want progress, then it can happen, but, quite apart from that, Turkey must discharge all those obligations to which it has committed itself, and there have been quite a few utterances from Mr Erdogan that had been better left unsaid."@en1
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