Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-09-Speech-3-339"
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"en.20080709.34.3-339"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, first I want to thank the Commission and the Council Presidency for the solidarity they have expressed regarding the German tourists in Turkey.
We are looking at a whole range of subjects and need to find a balance among them. They range from the Mediterranean Union – which is an important step forward if it is supported by the Community as a whole rather than being a priority of certain countries from certain regions – via the Swedish-Polish proposal, to the proposal for a Black Sea Union. These are all ideas we must look at together as a Community while also making it clear that some of these options offer the prospect of accession while others do not. The statement by the Polish Foreign Minister, Mr Sikorski, that some countries are Europe’s neighbours while others are European neighbours is perhaps an indication of the fact that the two are equally important but that there are differences as regards method and objective.
If, however, we have the scope to do so – bilateral relations, multilateral intermediate solutions or even permanent solutions somewhere between Neighbourhood Policy and full membership – and therefore have a whole range of instruments at our disposal, we should consider how we can also safeguard this balance, to which the Commissioner referred, politically and administratively in the long term; that would maintain both the European Union’s potential for development and those countries’ prospects of accession to Europe and their stability.
Let me ask some of the critics of the EU who have spoken here one question: which European Union do they mean? The European Union that we have now and that represents the greatest success story in terms of peace, freedom and prosperity in the history of this continent! We want to continue with this project and expand it as much as we can in order to continue achieving this kind of success and this objective and to bring in more countries. That is the issue!
That is why, when we talk of the Western Balkans, we have to say: if yesterday or this week we have a government in Serbia that says it wants to look towards Brussels, towards Europe, then for the sake of ensuring lasting peace in a region that has been a source of conflict for the past 150 years we should accept that offer and further that prospect in order to continue with the peaceful development of our continent."@en1
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