Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-13-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20070213.3.2-023"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, former Presidents who remind me of many times spent together, President-in-Office of the Council, President of the Commission, it is not often that we have a chance to take a step back and enjoy the opportunity that is given us today, however briefly, to exchange views on the entire period between now and the next European elections.
True, it is no secret that my group does not share the political options of the majority of this Parliament. I will nevertheless deliberately use some of the key points of your speech to make several specific proposals. They are limited measures with nothing revolutionary about them, and I sincerely think you do not necessarily have to sympathise with the European United Left/Nordic Green Left to identify with them. If the President of the European Parliament simply took them into account that would send a positive signal to important sections of our public opinion; it would say that you have heard them.
Thus, referring to the aspirations of Europe’s citizens, Mr President, you stressed and I quote: ‘we must preserve the European social model’ and, more importantly, you went on to say ‘our acts must be convincing’. That is in fact essential if we are to dispel a deep malaise that is being fed by the idea that instead of protecting the citizens from the effects of today’s globalisation the European Union is too often helping to make everyone’s existence increasingly insecure.
A significant act to begin to dispel this feeling of inevitability would be welcome. I suggest, Mr President, that you call on the Council, Commission and Parliament to abandon a proposal for a directive that affects the entire population of the European Union and that seems so dogmatic, so unjustified and so devastating for the future of public services that it is likely to provoke a new Bolkestein effect if nothing changes in the next few months; I am speaking of the proposal to liberalise postal services on 1 January 2009, six months before the next elections.
More generally, you stressed another idea which I consider very right and very important. You say we need ‘a new pact between the citizens and the institutions of the European Union’, then, about the future European treaty, you say: ‘we need a thoroughgoing reform of the European Union’. Everyone agrees this is necessary, but opinions on the substance of the future European basic law differ.
Mr Barroso has just addressed the Netherlands, saying to them: please help us, everyone has to move. I am suggesting to you a method that will allow everyone to move, to help relaunch Europe. Let the process which is starting be an opportunity for a real public debate across the Union, a candid debate, as close to the citizens as possible, on the meaning of Europe 50 years after the Treaty of Rome, on the purpose of our common policies, on the commitments we are prepared to assume together in the future. If the President of Parliament sets himself the task of bringing such an initiative to fruition, he will instantly have fulfilled his mandate.
Finally, Mr President, you made some apt remarks about intercultural dialogue and more particularly the Middle East, where you hope to go as soon as possible, you said. That does not surprise me, and I thank you for it. With this in mind, of all the initiatives I would like the President of Parliament to take, the most symbolic in my view, following the almost unhoped-for Mecca agreement, in which the whole of Hamas promises to comply with the international resolutions and the agreements signed between the PLO and Israel, would be to solemnly call on the European Union to lift the blockade on the Palestinian Government and to give a new chance to the hope for a just peace in a region that has been bruised by occupation and war for several generations.
I know that none of these initiatives will be easy to take, Mr President, but if you do, they are such that history will remember them."@en1
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