Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-16-Speech-3-074"
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"en.20080116.2.3-074"2
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"Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for the debate, questions, proposals and suggestions with such lively and interesting content. Much of what has been said will happily be considered in the next six months. I was pleased with your support for our priorities and especially touched when I heard the Slovenian national anthem being quoted, not by one of my Slovenian colleagues but by a colleague from France, and also when Slovenian products were mentioned, such as Elan skis, etc. In short, I enjoyed listening to the debate and I will be happy to answer some questions. Sadly, time will not permit me to answer them all.
Therefore, Ladies and Gentlemen, President of the Parliament, President of the Commission, the priorities presented are our common challenge. I am pleased with your support in realising them together. Once more I would like to emphasise the significance of the cooperation and synergy which we can achieve with the joint participation of all three key institutions of the European Union – the European Parliament, the European Commission and, of course, the Council.
We will do everything in our power to maximise that synergy. I am looking forward to being here with you on many occasions during the Slovenian Presidency and to fruitful and, as we have already seen, very lively discussions with you.
Ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon is certainly one of the key political priorities of the European Union in 2008. We were particularly aware of the importance of the Treaty in the period before it was signed. At that time, everybody was talking about a crisis. Now that the Treaty has been signed, it is still just as important, although it has not yet been ratified, and this is where our responsibility lies. More precisely, it is a concrete responsibility of every Member State to bring about the ratification in accordance with procedures laid down by its national constitution or legislation. If possible, this should be done within an agreed deadline. We do not wish to interfere in the internal affairs of any country, either as a Member State or as the State holding the Presidency for these six months. Some countries in particular misconstrued some of the statements. We never asserted otherwise and we always appealed for solidarity in discussing sensitive issues that may affect the process of ratification in those Members States where this topic may sometimes even be controversial.
The progress of the European Union does not begin with the Slovenian Presidency and we are convinced that it will continue in all areas. The stated priorities were not mentioned in any particular order in the sense that we would approach one when we had completed the previous one. We will attempt to accomplish as much as possible in all the areas listed as priorities, as well as in the others.
I am pleased that the President of the European Commission was somewhat more specific on points where I had run out of time. Certainly, the environment and energy package will be one of the key challenges in the next six months and up to the end of this year. We must demonstrate in practice that our aims, set out in March last year, were intended seriously.
I would like to emphasise once more that I have no doubt that healthy economic growth is the only basis of prosperity. Certainly, that must be a priority. The Lisbon strategy is clear about that, and I would like to emphasise that the story does not end there. This is where the story of social justice begins and both stories are important. However, we must recognise that we first have to create before we can share equitably.
As regards the most frequently raised questions relating to the situation in the western Balkans, I would like to answer some very specific questions and firstly those relating to the legal foundations of the solution to this problem. We would not like the European Union to start a long discussion about the legal foundations, which of them are stronger and which weaker, once we have reached the end of a long search for concordant solutions.
There is absolutely no need for Europe to be divided on this issue just because other bodies are divided. The unity of the European Union in solving this problem will be one of our priorities.
I would like to remind you that a similar question and discussions about legal foundations in the mid-90’s of the last century led to more than 100,000 deaths in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one million people being displaced. It is difficult to make up that lost time, but we can learn something from it.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was never said to be a bigger security problem than Kosovo. However, what
said was that in some aspects it was a very serious problem, for instance the return of the refugees. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are still many refugees who have not been able to return to their homes. Many things that need to be done in that country have been planned, but they cannot be implemented until the refugees have returned to their homes. That is one of the challenges awaiting us and I am afraid that some of the things said about it have been misinterpreted."@en1
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