Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-16-Speech-1-225"
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"en.20080616.27.1-225"2
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"Mr President, if we fish out the sea off the coast of Mauritania, that causes the very poorest people to come to Europe as immigrants, because they can no longer see any future at home. It is our poorest areas that have to deal with that, not the well-off areas. Then Europe loses the support of its voters, especially those on very low incomes. For that reason, too, cohesion policy is an absolute necessity. It is sad in very many ways, but also entirely understandable, that Ireland has rejected the Lisbon Treaty.
The Lisbon Treaty is a real step forward for development policy. It is the first text to establish coherence properly. The Union should not take away from the poor countries with one hand what is given with the other. The policy of the Union on agriculture, fisheries, trade should not run counter to development policy. Certainly it relates to several policy areas, but this is not a question of rivalry between committees in this Parliament. That is an unimportant detail.
The Treaty of Nice only required the Union to show itself a coherent force in the world. That turned out not to be enough. The agricultural policy shamelessly allowed our surpluses, such as sugar and grain, to be dumped on the world market with export subsidies. Fortunately those are now more or less a thing of the past.
It is only in the Lisbon Treaty, though, that supporters of the poor countries can find a legal basis enabling them to safeguard solidarity with the poorest people in the world. Ireland nevertheless voted against it. It was mainly the people with the lowest incomes who said no, because the poorest in Europe do not identify enough with this European Union. Too much insecurity, too many risks for them, they have to put up with the consequences of this incoherent and anti-social policy.
As the rapporteur, Mr Schmidt, has made crystal clear, the task is thus to show solidarity with all citizens of Europe and in the developing countries, whilst respecting the environment. That is no small task. There is a strong temptation to trade one of those solidarities against the other. All the same, they are not opposed. Solidarity with developing countries is necessary for genuine solidarity with people on low incomes in Europe and the rest of the world."@en1
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