Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-23-Speech-3-254"
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"en.20070523.20.3-254"2
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".
Mr President, Prime Minister, the Dutch electorate rejected the European constitution by a large margin. I can only hope that your government will continue to strive for a new Treaty rather than a constitution. I also hope that the voters will be given the opportunity to speak out on this, not only in the Netherlands, but in all Member States.
This debate is not only about the institutional issue, though. It is about the future of Europe, thus including the fundamental question about the EU’s borders, the question as to whether a non-European country such as Turkey could join. When you took over the EU presidency in 2004 and came to the European Parliament for the first time, you said that you would make sure that Turkey met all the Copenhagen criteria. Can you, Prime Minister, three years down the line, declare, hand on heart, that you have kept that promise?
The Turkish-Armenian publisher Hrant Dink was murdered after he was condemned by the Turkish courts as a criminal. Orhan Pamuk, a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, fled the country after he, too, received threats. In Turkish criminal law, it is a crime to insult what is termed ‘Turkish identity’. Freedom to express opinions is therefore absent. I am not even talking about the murder of three Christian publishers and a Catholic priest.
I could also mention the fact that Turkey still refuses to recognise one of the EU’s Member States or fulfil its duty to open up its ports and airports. Moreover, the trial of strength that is going on between the Islamists on the one hand and those in favour of the secular state on the other, should cause concern in Europe, but the European Union persists with the negotiations as if nothing was wrong. They completely ignore the large majority of the people who are against the accession. And whether they like it or not, this arrogance and this detachment from the world are the biggest threat to the EU’s continued existence."@en1
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