Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-17-Speech-3-032"
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"en.20070117.3.3-032"2
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"Mr President, Madam Federal Chancellor, your speech obliges me both to express agreement with you and to contradict you. I approve of the way in which you follow Marxist dialectics in referring to great Europeans from Plato to Rosa Luxemburg by way of Voltaire, and it is a good thing that you did, but – and this is where I have to contradict you – we, in Europe and the EU, are still a very long way away from putting civil liberties and human rights into practice. People without personal documentation cannot enjoy them, nor do the numerous refugees who turn up on a daily basis at the EU’s external borders. We have not forgotten the images from Ceuta, Melilla, and Lampedusa.
You are also right, Madam Federal Chancellor, to say that freedom must be won anew time and time again, but it is also true that freedom can exist only where there is social equality. As I see it, the implementation of individual freedoms and human rights in society faces an obstacle in the shape of the millions of people who are marginalised every day, without work, unable to live on their incomes, not to mention the deepening social divisions caused among other things and in particular by the enforcement of the Lisbon agenda. The same goes for access to culture and education for everyone living in the EU, including, and particularly, in Germany.
It is unfortunate that you did not cite one single concrete initiative that would reposition the EU as a social Union, that aims to bring in binding minimum social and environmental standards and minimum incomes in the EU, and that would also make a consistent policy of combating poverty and social exclusion the number one priority for the German Presidency of the Council.
I have something else to say about the European Constitution. On top of all the critical comments that have already been made about it, we also expect attention to be given, in any debate on the Constitution, to the need for minorities, too, to be able to live with a constitution in the future and not to feel permanently obliged to say ‘no’ to it. Any constitution must be forward-looking and must also be compatible with changing political majorities. That is not possible if it is to be characterised by undiluted free-market economic thinking."@en1
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