Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-353"
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"en.20070522.29.2-353"2
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".
Mr President, I should like to make two preliminary observations. I agree entirely with the Commissioner when he talks about a strategic partnership and the value of one, and states that we must continue the dialogue with Russia and must see what we can get out of it on the basis of our own principles and values.
Secondly, I am a Dutchman. I was not born in Eastern Europe. I grew up in freedom and have always lived in it. I think it is extremely important for me as a representative of what we could call an ‘old’ Member State to comment on what has happened to Estonia and the way in which Russia has treated it.
It is also important to note that things related to the past are always sensitive, for us as much as for others. One has to tread carefully. I am a historian myself, and I know how dangerous it is if too much history is injected in politics. Although I always counsel in favour of exercising a certain level of self-restraint, my group has still expressed its solidarity with Estonia, and this must also be the basis for the European attitude in the conflict that has come about between Estonia and Russia.
The fact that this conflict affects not only Russia, but the entire European Union was hammered home by the Commission President, Mr Barroso, in Samara. The European Union has not attempted to trivialise the conflict. Russia’s reaction was inappropriate and unacceptable. European governments and members of parliament have tried to interfere in the domestic affairs of an EU Member State, and this is outrageous.
Add to this the fact that the Russian authorities have done nothing to protect the functioning of the Estonian embassy in Moscow, as a result of which the conflict ended up, to all intents and purposes, being a diplomatic crisis. As I see it – and this is also worded well in the resolution – the Russian authorities, but perhaps we too, would do well to replace the hostile rhetoric by an attempt to contribute to a dialogue, not least between the communities in the countries in question, namely Estonia and Latvia, and not to drive things to a head, because this dialogue is also needed to create relations within those countries that match European values.
I hope that the message of dialogue, the message of talking about the future, not only about the past, will also be put across in Moscow."@en1
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