Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-09-Speech-3-027"
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"en.20070509.11.3-027"2
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".
Mr President, I wish to thank you for your support and solidarity.
I should also like to express my gratitude to all colleagues for their extraordinary demonstration of support and solidarity with Estonia, because what is happening between an EU Member State, Estonia, and the Russian Federation is not a bilateral case but a case for the EU as a whole – it is a test case of whether the EU is a real political Union rooted in solidarity and unity. Today, the clarity, timing and unity of the EU reaction are being tested. What we expect is a strong EU commitment to unconditional solidarity.
First of all, we need to be free of wishful thinking. The way the Russian Federation is treating an EU Member State is clearly not an aberration. President Putin presented a programme of a new, much more assertive Russian foreign policy in his Munich speech. This approach could be termed neo-imperialist or revanchist. The aim is to regain, at least partially, its past influence over its former Baltic colonies, and then over the former Warsaw Pact part of Europe, relying on the current energy boom that has boosted Russian influence, as well as misusing parts of the Russian population living outside Russia.
I would like to make it very clear that President Putin calls these Russians his compatriots. I would like to dispute that strongly. Russians living in Estonia are my compatriots, and I am proud of them because 99 % of them remained loyal not to President Putin but to the Estonian state.
Therefore, the question is not only about solidarity; the key word is the ‘sovereignty’ of the new Member States of the European family. We can succeed in achieving it only when we speak with one voice and demonstrate unity in action. When a Member State that decides to be clearer about its own past, and does so in an open and dignified way, suddenly becomes an object of concentrated pressure from its huge neighbour; when its embassy in Moscow is practically held hostage for a whole week; when riots to destabilise law and order are organised with clear inspiration and assistance from a foreign state; when there are calls by Russian officials for a democratically elected government to step down; when an economic blockade is being implemented; when websites of the Estonian state institutions are still being blocked by massive cyber attacks – an innovative form of propaganda war; then one has to be really worried about the sovereignty of the state in question.
In conclusion, there is still another form of sovereignty we must defend: our right to decide on and assess our past. You quoted the resolution of the European Parliament two years ago concerning the many European countries that fell victim to the renewed tyranny inflicted by Stalin’s Soviet Union. There is still a dividing line in Europe, between all the western democracies, which have never recognised the illegal annexation and occupation of the Baltic States to the Soviet Union in 1940 as a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact, and the Russian Federation, which still denies this pact and also tries to deny the right of its former victims to assess their past. Therefore, we need your solidarity, and I am very thankful to all of you for demonstrating it."@en1
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