Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-03-Speech-3-216"
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"en.20080903.23.3-216"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to congratulate Mrs Flautre on her excellent work. However, this was misrepresented, at least in part, by the Committee on Foreign Affairs during the vote, which caused the Socialist Group in the European Parliament and the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance to abstain, while only the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats and the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe approved the substantially amended text, precisely because the adoption of a series of amendments tabled by them altered its political balance. I also recall that my group, the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, voted against this in committee.
As a group, we recognise that the 13 amendments tabled, even if adopted, cannot alter the political tone of the report. Therefore, although we will be voting in favour of the majority of the amendments, our final vote remains critical.
In our opinion, the problem is that international relations must be founded on dialogue and mutual respect, even if there is a difference of opinion. Sanctions such as these must be the last resort available to Member States and international organisations, yet the report hails them as the principal instrument of EU foreign policy.
We also believe that priority should be given to so-called positive incentive measures. A country must be rewarded if it undertakes to promote and respect human rights by signing specific economic, trade and financial agreements. Instead, however, the report places the emphasis on negative measures, which strangely enough are always against the usual suspects, such as Cuba. These examples show how flawed the sanctions policy is.
In short, we need more cooperation and less unilateral punishment. Not even the European Union has a monopoly on rights, as demonstrated by the insufferable way in which we treat migrants and Roma. Perhaps we should sanction ourselves!"@en1
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