Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-20-Speech-2-051"
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"en.20080520.6.2-051"2
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"Thank you, Mr President. Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, opposing discrimination is a fundamental human value; in this regard there is no difference of opinion among us. The European People’s Party attaches particular importance to anti-discrimination policy. It is our belief that Member States have an incontrovertible and unavoidable responsibility to ensure that not a single citizen of the European Union faces discrimination.
The Group is also aware that not all problems, unfortunately, can be resolved by means of legislation. In order gradually to put an end to discrimination, we need an appropriate political culture, we need tolerance in daily life, in the workplace, in public life, in communications, from national to local level, and we need the whole of civil society to pull together.
As practice has shown, implementing the European directives on discrimination is no easy task. Half of the Member States have not managed to transpose the directives adequately into their national legislation or apply them appropriately. It is a fact that a real gap exists in European legislation between Article 13 of the EC Treaty and the existing directives. This means that not all ‘protected’ groups, in other words those referred to in Article 13, are guaranteed equal rights under European law with regard to access to goods and services.
To bridge this gap, however, the European People’s Party does not believe the solution lies in adopting a comprehensive directive that would be difficult to implement and inefficient. Instead, it feels that a European directive is needed as a matter of urgency to help in a non-hierarchical manner to end discrimination against the 84 million disabled people who live in Europe, so that people living with a disability can enjoy the same rights throughout the EU.
Bearing in mind the fact that the average lifespan of the population is increasing and age-related chronic illness often results in damage to a person’s health, the number of people living with a disability is set to increase in future. We are convinced that this approach will provide more effective, practical help to people living with a disability. The Group would therefore support an initiative of the European Commission with this aim. Thank you."@en1
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