Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-25-Speech-2-225"
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"en.20070925.30.2-225"2
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"Madam President, I was very pleased to hear about the Commission initiative to establish a European Day against the Death Penalty on 10 October, and I fully support that initiative and urge all colleagues to support it, as many in this debate have done already. It was shocking for me to realise that not all EU countries were in favour of this initiative. Poland’s position puts the credibility of the EU as a primary force for abolition in jeopardy and I sincerely hope that the Government of Poland will reconsider its position.
The death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment. It is detrimental to human dignity and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the use of the death penalty serves as a deterrent against crimes. Fortunately, the trend in the world is now towards abolition. The whole of Europe, except for Belarus, is already on board, and more and more states from all continents are joining an ever-growing list of abolitionist countries.
I also think that we should continue to urge our American colleagues to abolish the death penalty once and for all. A moratorium on executions is the first step towards abolition. The EU must continue to urge all states that still maintain the death penalty to introduce a moratorium. A resolution at the UN General Assembly against the death penalty will hopefully play an important role in this respect.
However, we should take care that the situation does not develop in the same way as in 1999, when Finland, my home country, tried to get the UN General Assembly to adopt the death penalty resolution. It was watered down so much that it would have done more harm to the cause than good. Now that Italy has put the issue back on the UN agenda I hope that the EU as a whole will back the proposal and we shall get a UN General Assembly resolution on this."@en1
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