Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-18-Speech-2-031"
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"en.20071218.5.2-031"2
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"Mr President, President of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, congratulations, this has been an excellent Presidency. Commission President, congratulations for your support and commitment. Interinstitutional cooperation worked and produced good results. I also have to say that I did not grasp the meaning of Mr Schulz’s speech and I did not understand the reference to the Bolkestein Directive that President Barroso inherited from the previous Commission.
In this Parliament, we have seen excellent cooperation between the President of the European Commission and the Commission itself with Parliament; all the MEPs worked together well – the Portuguese Members can attest to that – and the PSD members are proud of having contributed to the success of this Presidency.
Moreover, Portugal has always given of its best when it has had the Presidency of the Council. That was the case in 1992 with Mr Cavaco Silva and the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, João de Deus Pinheiro; it was the case in 2000, with Prime Minister António Guterres; and it has been the case in 2007, for our third Presidency of the Council, with José Sócrates and Minister Luís Amado.
I would like to highlight a symbolic measure that President Sócrates mentioned earlier: the Council’s recent approval of the European Day against the Death Penalty. This is the Europe that we can be proud of, the Europe of common values, finally shared by all Member States without exception. I would also like to recall three structural measures that were taken in the course of these six months that I believe were the most important: the end of the institutional crisis, with the adoption of the Treaty and the proclamation of the binding European Charter of Fundamental Rights, the historic extension of the Schengen area, an issue which, as you know, I followed personally, taking in a further nine Member States and nearly four million square kilometres, which could be achieved this year only with Portuguese skill in finding a solution, and the adoption of the important strategic Galileo programme which some would prefer not to exist, leaving the United States, Russia and China with a monopoly.
Congratulations, Prime Minister Sócrates, and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The European Presidency was a Presidency with results, but 2008 will be a quite different year – the sceptic in me would be surprised if the Portuguese do not demand results in national politics too. I am among those who believe that he is a better President of the Council than Prime Minister of Portugal."@en1
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