Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-14-Speech-3-306"
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"en.20071114.33.3-306"2
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"Mr President, it is very important for our neighbours to be a circle of prosperous, stable, peaceful countries where power is based on democratic models and where there is full respect for basic rights.
This idea must be a basic premise for the European Neighbourhood Policy, a policy which should encourage and help our neighbours to undertake the reforms necessary to make the values I referred to above effective.
The issue of political, economic and social reforms is, for me, an essential part of the report which we will approve tomorrow.
A second thought is that the neighbourhood policy must have regard to each country’s specific characteristics. Differences must not be drawn on the basis of the continent to which the country belongs. Neighbours are just that: neighbours. That is the important point. The fact that some of them are also European may have consequences in terms of potential accession to the Union, but not for the purposes of neighbourhood policy. That is a more general assertion with which I agree, because it would be a mistake for us to discriminate against one group of countries in favour of another.
There cannot be a first-tier neighbourhood policy and another, second-tier, neighbourhood policy. Neighbours on the southern shore of the Mediterranean have noted with some apprehension that the enlargement to twenty-seven may lead to a degree of exclusion by the enlarged Union; a neighbourhood policy which prioritises Eastern Europe or the Caucasus may well fuel that fear.
The southern Mediterranean countries have very ancient links to the Union. They are crucial to us in key fields such as security, immigration and energy. Many of our Member States have, as we know, extremely close historic, political, human, cultural and economic links with them.
This, then, is the second major point in my speech. We should not differentiate between Europeans and non-Europeans in the neighbourhood policy. The policy must, as Mr Brok has just said, be one of shared responsibility.
In view of the above, Mr President, I do not share the doubts expressed in numbered paragraph two of the report about the meaningfulness of the ENP’s geographic scope. Moreover, I would not have split the report into two sections, one on European neighbours and the other on Mediterranean neighbours. A single document would have been better.
To close, my congratulations to Mr Tannock and Mr Obiols."@en1
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