Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-04-Speech-2-356"
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"en.20070904.28.2-356"2
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"Mr President, I should also like to thank all the Members for a very interesting debate.
I would like to tell you a story from Greek mythology. You can find this story depicted in mosaics in Pathos in Cyprus. It is the story of the first wine drinkers. A servant of the god Dionysus stole wine to give it to humans for the first time. They drank it, got drunk for the first time in human history, thought they were poisoned and killed the servant who had given them the wine.
In this day and age the solutions are much more complicated, and we must come up with a different approach. Everyone has chosen a different approach. Some say that we have gone too far, others that we have not gone far enough. Some would have wanted us to legislate on everything, others that everything should be done by the Member States.
The fact is that the solution lies somewhere in the middle. We are to complement Member States and support them in their policies, but that does not mean that there is no role for the European Union, as was reflected in the report and what Members have said. At the same time, not everything can be solved through legislation. We must, therefore, give the forum a chance to work and produce concrete results, which we will monitor. However, at the same time, as has already been said, legislation exists in the Member States on many of these aspects. It is implementation that is lacking and causing the problem. Therefore, putting pressure on the Member States will help us to achieve positive results.
No matter what each side expected, we should not underestimate the importance of the fact that, for the first time, we have acknowledged at European level that there is a problem regarding alcohol-related harm, that there should be a European strategy – which has been adopted today – and that we now have a European debate, a European initiative and European action. This is important. No Member State can solve this problem in isolation and no Member State is immune from this problem. There is now binge-drinking in Spain, which used to be a north-western European problem. Therefore, one sees that, given cultural interchanges and other reasons – a social analyst could explain why this is happening – we have the same problems moving across borders, and there are no geographical barriers to such problems. They exist everywhere in the European Union.
This is the first important step, though not the last one. If we do not see a result within a reasonable time then we can re-evaluate, reassess and re-examine this strategy and take a different approach or a different course. However, we are on the right track for now. Once again, I would like to thank the rapporteur, the committee and the Members for supporting this strategy. I look forward to working with you to achieve the results that we all desire."@en1
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