Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-18-Speech-2-025"
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"en.20071218.5.2-025"2
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"Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, President of the Commission, we have just heard much self-congratulation. I think, however, that the end of an EU Council Presidency should logically also be a chance for the Heads of State or Government to make a critical assessment of their action in view of the challenges to be faced. A check-up of this kind is particularly important at a time when a financial crisis is flaring up, when mobilisation against global warming is causing a struggle, the outcome of which is uncertain, and when the international community is attempting to revive a peace process aimed at resolving the conflict that most epitomises our era.
Let us start with the financial crisis. For once we are hearing the truth from a leader writer at the
Martin Wolf. ‘What is happening … is a huge blow to the credibility of the Anglo-Saxon model of … financial capitalism’, he writes. When will the European Council have such a burst of lucidity? More generally, is this really the moment to be pushing free competition to the detriment of employment safeguards and trade union rights, as two alarming judgments by the Court of Justice – the Viking Line case and, more scandalously still, the Vaxholm case – have just illustrated? Is it by going into a downward spiral on employment rights that the EU plans to deal with the challenge of globalisation? Do you believe that Europeans will, in the long term, accept this unravelling of what they have gained, in the name of the free market and the holy grail of competition? You are too easily reassured, Mr Barroso. One opinion poll does not announce confidence any more than one swallow makes a summer.
Next, the climate. Europe claims to be at the forefront of this battle, and in fact the targets set by the 27 Member States for reducing emissions are on the right lines. But what happens to concrete measures, the moment the industrial lobbies get to work on the decision-making of the EU's highest authorities? We will have a clearer idea tomorrow, when the Commission presents its new standards for carbon dioxide emissions for cars.
Finally, assistance to Palestine. Well done for the financial commitment – provided that it is adhered to, of course. But where is the EU’s political commitment? What about the clear need for the removal of 550 military roadblocks, for the end of the blockade of Gaza, for the effective freeze on settlement in the West Bank, for the release of prisoners, for an end to the humiliation? When will we see an end to the self-censorship with regard to the occupier, to use the terms of the report by Mr de Soto, the former UN representative in the Middle East?
These are three areas, among others, in which the credibility of the European project could be won or lost."@en1
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