Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-12-Speech-3-330"
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"en.20071212.30.3-330"2
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".
Mr President, my compliments to the Commission for its efforts, which the Commissioner has just described. I would stress today the importance of World AIDS Day and of our joint responsibility in combating this disease. Because a disaster is unfolding worldwide, a disaster which does not get the attention it deserves.
My group thus welcomes the fact that we are having this debate today in Strasbourg. The figures speak for themselves. Worldwide there are 33 million people who have full-blown AIDS or are HIV-positive, and a total of 25 million people worldwide have died of the disease.
But a lot of people act as if AIDS does not exist. Because AIDS is associated with sex, many people prefer not to talk about it. And that makes it hard – as the Commissioner says – to educate people about AIDS. The younger generation of today is paying a high price for that. Half of all new HIV infections are in people under the age of 25. In the time it takes me to say this, six more young people will have been infected with the virus and three children will have died of AIDS. We are talking here of a generation which has not known a world without AIDS.
The disaster is not confined to Africa. In recent years the number of HIV infections in Europe and Central Asia has doubled from 1.25 to 2.4 million. It is high time for the European Union to do something. This terrible disease, which destroys the lives of millions of families worldwide, is preventable. AIDS can be fought by effective information, readier availability of condoms, and affordable drugs.
The Commissioner rightly points out that we have allowed AIDS to become a forgotten disease on our own continent. Europe's youngsters of today were not around for the big public awareness campaigns of the 1990s. We must act vigorously if we do not want things to get out of hand here.
So, partly as a symbolic act and partly because we think it is a really important initiative, my group launched a campaign last month to get the tax on condoms reduced to 5% throughout the European Union. The fact that the rate of VAT on condoms varies so widely – in some countries it is as much as 25% – shows that we do not in Europe have a shared approach to this shared problem, or at least that we are not doing enough about it.
The Portuguese Presidency has given solid backing to our campaign and we hope for a positive endorsement from Commissioner Kovács too when he launches the debate on the European VAT system at the end of next year."@en1
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