Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-17-Speech-3-313"
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"en.20081217.22.3-313"2
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"Madam President, firstly I would like to thank our rapporteur, Mr Catania, for his best efforts to take into account amendments submitted by political groups. It was a very ambitious task and I hope that the report on fundamental rights within the EU will finally be adopted.
For the future, my group believes that our aim, when preparing such reports, should not only be to mention problems but also to name and shame the Member States where specific fundamental rights are violated. A letter to this effect signed by the co-chairs of the Green Group has recently been sent to the President of Parliament. Of course we can all guess which Member State is concerned when one or other particular human rights violations is mentioned, but we believe that Europeans must know for sure who is ignoring our crucial principle of respect for fundamental rights.
With regard to the text, I deeply regret that some of my colleagues disregard the fact that not only civil and political rights matter. In my opinion, economic, social and cultural rights are equally important.
A number of proposals by the Green Group have been included in the final text. These are the following: the protection of privacy when fighting terrorism; the need to ratify the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; and the prohibition of discrimination concerning stateless persons. We also call on Member States to ratify the United Nations Convention on Disability and allow the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to examine individual cases.
In my country, Latvia, more than 350 000 so-called non-citizens, many of whom were born in the country, cannot even vote in local elections. Unfortunately this problem was not addressed in the report, due to the principle of not mentioning individual Member States, but I want to stress that refusing long-term residents the right to participate in political life at local level threatens social and political integration. Therefore, granting voting rights to these people is absolutely essential."@en1
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