Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-05-Speech-3-017"
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"en.20060705.2.3-017"2
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".
Mr President, during the previous Finnish Presidency seven years ago significant steps were taken towards federalising the Union. At the time a basis was created for establishing an area of freedom, security and justice; in other words, the communitisation of the Member States’ civil legislation. That policy is now being continued. During the previous term the militarisation of the Union was also begun and military institutions established for it, under whose leadership preparations are in place for military operations in Africa early next year. Training for these is going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although no one is going to the source of the chaos in the eastern parts of the country.
In major political issues during the Presidency the Finnish Government will not obtain the backing of its own people. An indication of that is the resistance to the Government’s proposal to ratify the defunct EU Constitution in the Finnish Parliament this autumn. According to an opinion poll, just 22% of the Finnish people are in favour of ratification, as proposed by the government.
This Constitution will never come into force anywhere. Its ratification is a waste of time, although that is what the Commission, among other bodies, wants. Commissioner Olli Rehn, after all, has adopted a position on this on behalf of the Commission, although the matter does not fall within the Commission’s competence. Commissioner Rehn’s attitude does not befit a Member of the European Commission.
Some Member States, furthermore, have proposed to Finland that the Constitution should be ratified. Finland’s acceptance is a sign of subservience. Neither is Finland showing any regard for the power of the people or democracy in France or the Netherlands.
According to an opinion poll, the Finnish people oppose any military alliance for the country. The Finnish Government is making a mockery of the will of the people in this matter too by making the supply of EU combat forces one priority area. Mr Vanhanen’s Government has yielded to the EU’s will by abolishing the requirement under national law for a UN mandate as a condition for the mobilisation of a combat force division. The UN is being prepared for illegal wars with no UN mandate, even though, from the legal standpoint internationally, a precondition for legal military action is in fact a UN mandate. Our group opposes these attempts at the militarization of the EU and involving the EU in illegal wars.
Civil servants in Finland are trained in dealing effectively with matters relating to EU enlargement, Structural Funds programmes, the REACH regulation, the Seventh Framework Programme on science and research and many other day-to-day issues on the EU’s agenda. These also include the directive on services and free trade, which our group has viewed critically. Openness and transparency, which Finland says it promotes, would be increased by Finland’s own decision to make known in public the recipients of EU agricultural aid.
Our group actively supports the policy on Russia and thinks that Commission President Barroso’s proposal for a free trade agreement with Russia is an interesting start and one which the Presidency needs to respond to. We wish Finland success in all the various matters it has to deal with on a daily basis."@en1
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