Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-14-Speech-3-199"
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"en.20070314.17.3-199"2
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"Madam President, I congratulate the rapporteur on bringing this report to plenary.
The question of trade in the Mediterranean is, of course, an extremely important and historic one, and the Commissioner was right to reflect on the wider dimension of our relations with the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Indeed, it is a matter of great concern to me that, as he mentioned, the agreement just signed with Egypt was done against a background of very considerable repression in that country, the most important in the region.
In late January I tried to visit Dr Ayman Nour in prison. He is one of two parliamentarians currently in prison in Cairo – indeed, in the same prison. It highlights the failure, in a way, of the EU to stand by the principles which we are supposed to represent here in this House. I refer to this because, as has been remarked, there is to be a meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly this weekend in Tunis and, as a Vice-President of this House, I am privileged to work on that dossier.
One of the elements that we could begin to think about in the context of that Assembly is the evolution of a more real parliament. I am the chairman of a working party that deals with the financing and organisation of the EMPA, and proposals for reform are indeed going to the meeting in Tunis. But one of the areas that we have not yet been able to take forward is the question of the creation of political families in the Assembly so as to normalise the political debate away from the important, but nevertheless existential, questions of the Middle East, to the more mundane, but nevertheless terribly important issues of trade, of environment, of commerce, of transport – so many of the day-to-day issues which, I believe, should preoccupy us in our joint endeavours in making sense of our relationship across the Mediterranean.
In this way we could begin to make less relevant those radicalised Islamic parties which are now the subject of so much attention in that part of the world."@en1
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