Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-09-Speech-3-337"
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"en.20080709.34.3-337"2
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"Mr President, I am particularly happy to conclude my part in this debate in the presence of a parliamentary delegation from South Africa, as I started my political activity some decades ago in a campaign to free Nelson Mandela. We are lucky that in this House the only prisoners left seem to be my friend, Elmar Brok, and myself, as publicly announced on the table.
I would like to thank the Members for a very substantive and responsible debate today. I only want to make one cross-cutting point of a general nature.
I am glad that the Brok report and today’s debate essentially endorse the renewed consensus on EU enlargement, which was achieved in December 2006 – not least because of the events in 2005. The key virtue of this strategy is that it strikes a carefully calibrated balance between the underlying strategic importance of enlargement in extending the zone of peace and prosperity, liberty and democracy on the one hand, and our own capacity to integrate new members with rigorous conditionality and our internal reform on the other.
I cannot help recalling – I have an elephant’s memory – that in the autumn of 2004, after a parliamentary hearing, I was criticised by the Committee on Foreign Affairs for a lack of vision because I did not immediately want to provide an accession perspective for Ukraine. I only said that we should not prejudge the future as regards Ukraine. A year later I was criticised for emphasising absorption capacity and stopping the motion of enlargement. In this light I particularly welcome today’s debate, which strikes the right balance between the strategic importance of enlargement and our own capacity to integrate new members.
This debate and the report find a solid third way by combining both a deepening of political integration with the gradual widening of the European Union. In my view this clearly shows a convincing convergence of the use of the European Parliament and of the Commission, and of the European Union as a whole, and I certainly welcome this phenomenon and the direction towards the renewed consensus on enlargement which has been prevailing since 2006."@en1
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