Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-23-Speech-2-060"

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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this morning many have spoken here about the war on terrorism, and have gone on to say that it is difficult to wage war on something that is not a concrete entity, does not have an army and does not have a territory, but is simply a tactic. This strange war has not been won, and it will certainly be difficult to win it, but there have been some positive results, such as the mere fact that the United States has not suffered any more attacks since 11 September. These successes, however, have come at a price, and I share the concern of Mrs Lefrançois, who considers the dividing line between freedom of speech and law-breaking to be sometimes rather blurred, and can see the risk that efforts to increase the security of European citizens will in practice result in restrictions on those citizens’ rights and freedoms. It is very difficult to find the balance between these two requirements, partly because we are in unknown territory: terrorism is too recent a phenomenon for us to be able to rely on precedents, or to have experience from which to learn. There is no doubt that in the name of the war on terrorism illegal acts have been carried out, chiefly by that country which has done most to fight against terrorism, including in our interests – namely, the United States. This is because there is a price to be paid for keeping terrorism in check, and that is the restriction of civil liberties. On the other hand, it is easy not to make any mistakes when one does little or nothing. Hence, in the European Union, if we want to ensure that we have a more secure future, we must do more; we must improve coordination of action by Member States and the initiatives taken by the secret services and, above all, we must not leave the United States to bear the burden of this responsibility alone. If we do this, we will perhaps be able to try to make our principles prevail, as well as our ideas about that blurred line between citizens’ security and breaches of human rights."@en1
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