Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-03-Speech-2-477"
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"en.20090203.24.2-477"2
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"−
Mr President, my Group, the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, did not hesitate to submit this oral question to the Commission when, during several sessions in the Committee on Petitions, we became aware of the situation in which many citizens of Latvia find themselves.
Members of the Commission, Commissioner, it is unacceptable that we are seeing cases of segregated citizens in the European Union in the 21
century. This does not conform to the European Union, its principles or its values. In a state that has been part of the European Union since 2004, with a population of barely 2.5 million inhabitants, there is currently a law in force preventing half a million people, quite simply, from exercising their rights as citizens.
These people are called non-citizens. They have a black-coloured passport and for that reason, they are called ‘blacks’ or ‘aubergines’. They are even referred to as such by the administration itself, by the State, the government, and they are citizens who do not enjoy their legitimate right to be able to vote or be elected.
We believe, therefore, that the European Commission should exert considerable pressure on the government in order to prevent its failure to observe many recommendations that have been made by various institutions, such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and the very recommendation made by this Parliament in the debate on Latvia’s accession, the Resolution of 11 March, in which it was clearly stated that a real solution had to be found to the segregation problem and the issue of those citizens who are required to prove whether they were born before 1940. This is, quite simply, unacceptable.
I do not believe it should be tolerated. We cannot coexist in the European Union while this situation continues and, therefore, we believe it is very important that the Commission, the European Union authorities and all of us put forward proposals in the same vein to put an end to this situation.
To that effect, our group expects the Commission to make concrete proposals on the questions that we raise in this debate. With regard to language, we are also concerned by the fact that, pursuant to new regulations − and there were student demonstrations last year − 60% of the curriculum must be taught in Latvian, thereby creating clear discrimination against the Russian language.
I seem to recall that during the Franco dictatorship in my home country of Spain, it was forbidden to speak in Basque, Catalan or Galician. Those languages were simply banned. Today, the reality is that they are co-official. I believe that this is a situation that should also be put in force so that, ultimately, no citizens of the European Union are prevented from expressing themselves in their mother tongue, in their own language, which should share equal official status with any other language that can be used in that state.
I therefore call on the Commission to act dynamically once and for all so as to prevent the segregation that is taking place in that member country of the European Union."@en1
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