Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-21-Speech-2-356"
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"en.20081021.40.2-356"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen of the Council, and, of course, ladies and gentlemen of this House, Mr Cappato, the Commission is very pleased with the attention paid by Parliament to the negotiation of a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Vietnam, as well as to the human rights situation in that country.
Our debate is most timely, since, on this very day, as our President has mentioned, talks are being held in Hanoi to negotiate this agreement. I can tell you that the human rights situation is an absolutely crucial concern of the European Union in its relations with Vietnam. It is true that that country is, in spite of everything, making a certain amount of progress in this area. I am thinking in particular of the recent efforts to reduce the scope of the death penalty, to establish, for example, a legislative framework setting out the conditions for the exercise of religious freedom, and to better manage the issue of ethnic minorities who had fled to Cambodia and who are now returning to Vietnam.
Nevertheless – and you are right in this regard – it is clear that, in recent months, some worrying trends have unfortunately developed with regard, in particular, to religious freedom and to freedom of expression. These trends are illustrated more specifically by the harassment of the Catholic community in Hanoi and by the sentencing, last week, of journalists for their investigation into corruption.
As I said to the Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Khiêm, when he was in Brussels very recently, on 17 September, it would be disastrous for the long-term stability of Vietnam and for its international credibility if the current economic and social difficulties in that country led to its instinctively regressing to authoritarianism and repression.
Now more than ever, Vietnam must, on the contrary, establish mechanisms intended to allow peaceful expression of the tensions and social frustrations being felt in that country. This is a message that President Barroso will also repeat this week when he meets Prime Minister Dung on the fringe of the ASEM Summit in Beijing. This will be the European Union’s message during the next session of the EU-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue, which will also take place in Hanoi, in December. The draft Partnership and Cooperation Agreement proposed by the EU to Vietnam confirms and increases the importance that we attach to human rights in our relations with this country.
Indeed, the current draft agreement, as our President said, includes a vital, suspensive clause on human rights; consolidates the regular EU–Vietnam dialogue on human rights by conferring a legal status on it; and makes provision to help Vietnam equip itself with a national action plan on human rights. It includes a whole series of detailed provisions on compliance with labour law, good governance and the promotion of the rule of law. It also contains a clause on the International Criminal Court. This agreement is thus a legal instrument and a lever for political action that I believe we need in order to increase our involvement in the areas of human rights and democratisation."@en1
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