Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-13-Speech-3-062"

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"Mr President, I too should like to extend a huge compliment to the two rapporteurs, Mr Brok and Mr Stubb, for their excellent work. Enlargement, as many have said before me, is one of Europe’s biggest success stories. If people think that is obvious, all we need to do is to remind ourselves of Mr Milinkevich, yesterday’s speaker in this Chamber, who has been in jail many times himself. His son was in prison last time he was here, as are hundreds of people, simply for fighting for freedom. Things could have been very different for Eastern Europe, and the democratic reforms of all those countries that have joined in such a short space of time are a remarkable feat in which Europe should take a great deal of pride. In order, however, to retain support for this effective enlargement, the right balance must be struck in a few areas. One could compare this with a house. If one continues to add bedrooms on the first and second floors, one will need to reinforce the foundations, and that is why it is very important that Parliament should now speak out so emphatically in favour of introducing a new treaty before the next enlargement round. This is not so much intended for the new countries as it is for us. Rather than being complacent, we should do now what needs to be done. Much has been said about integration capacity. It is indeed to be welcomed that the concept has been introduced, although it now needs to be deepened at institutional, financial and treaty level. Since, however, integration capacity also involves public support, we need to explain to them that enlargement is a good thing, we can make certain demands of the candidate Member States, and we must, by carrying out convincing reforms, try to retain the European public’s support for this process. Finally, with regard to Turkey, a clear penalty was needed, because conditions are there to be met. At the same time, a clear and additional signal has been sent by the Council, moments of assessment have been built in, rules for Turkey have been stepped up to some degree; at the same time, there is also pressure on us to put arrangements in place for the sake of the Northern Cypriots. I should like to repeat emphatically that we are behind the reformers in Turkey. We hope that next year, progress will be made as regards Cyprus and we hope, above all, that we will now once again be able to turn our attention to the necessary reforms in Turkey. I urge the reformers to make headway now in the areas of the free expression of opinion and freedom of religion, so that next year this rapporteur can be more positive compared to last year."@en1

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