Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-12-Speech-4-027"
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"− Mr President, this is a really interesting debate, and I wish to thank the Members very much for their overall great support for this Eastern Partnership approach.
I would say to Mr Szent-Iványi that we support the eastern partners in meeting our conditions. That is crucial. We therefore have a mechanism for giving them more capacity-building and more institution-building, because we can see that sometimes the institutions are weak.
Concerning Ukraine, we are working on the legal framework, but implementation is up to the governments in every democratic country, once the parliament has adopted the legislation. Therefore, with the Eastern Partnerships, we are trying to support and to push, but it is also up to those countries to do their job. As Mr Swoboda mentioned, it is very important that we are also critical when necessary, and there has to be genuine leadership in a country. At present we are not always sure about that, and want the country to move ahead.
I am very grateful to Mr Saryusz-Wolski for his support. It is absolutely right to say that differentiation is also key here, because the various countries are very different: Ukraine is in the forefront, in principle, then there are Moldova and Georgia, and then there is a country like Belarus, in which the situation is very delicate.
I am preparing for a visit to Belarus, where we have to work a delicate balance, because we want to offer something – particularly to the population. From the very beginning, the Commission has supported the students in Vilnius, and I would like to see more support from the various Member States, because the ones that always speak up about this should also do something. I have always been in favour of that.
However, we also want Mr Lukashenko to go on with his reforms, which is what we are saying. It is important to communicate in such a way that this message is clear. On Monday, there will be a GAERC meeting at which the question of what to do about Belarus will certainly come up. The outcome will most probably be along the same lines as now, because we are not yet satisfied but, at the same time, we have seen some positive steps.
In reply to Mr Vigenin, I would say that this does not replace membership. There cannot be membership, because neither these countries nor the European Union is mature enough for their membership. Therefore, we have to design. This is a policy designed to give as much as we can, provided the countries want to take it. The difficulty is that it is much easier, as I have already said, to give something if you lay down conditions or if you say: ‘well, try to do this, try to do that, and we will give you opportunities’. In this case there is no immediate goal of having a specific result, but the overall result is better stability, more security and more opportunity.
Concerning security questions, I would say to Mrs Isler Béguin that it is absolutely true that we have to work for more security, but many other questions also come into the picture. We are working very hard on Azerbaijan, on the question of Nagorno-Karabakh, on Moldova, Transnistria and on Georgia, and are sticking very firmly to these questions. It is a principal question. We will not recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia but, at the same time, we have to work with Russia and have to engage with Russia. On this point, I agree with Mr Swoboda that we have to be realistic, but also to make our firm position clearly known.
These are the major issues, on which all of you have made very valuable points. In a multilateral framework it is very good to have civil society involved, in all its different forms, and also presents a great opportunity for them and for us to work on energy security. Energy security today is one of the important issues where we have a real win-win situation: we are highly interested and they are highly interested. We have to bring that together.
Let me say at the outset that it is based on values. It gives support for both political and economic reform. It will require resources – and I wish to thank Mrs Andrikienė for her clear support on this – and, as many of you have said, it will also require political will.
It is crucial that, apart from government-to-government cooperation, there be cooperation with the population, which is clearly there, and there is also the parliamentary aspect to things. Therefore, it is very important that you also use the new Euronest and all other means in order to really instil our ideas. That is my first comment.
A lot can be said about this Eastern Partnership. The first thing to ask is what the added value is to our normal neighbourhood policy. The answer is ‘quite a lot’! We are going into greater depth: the association agreements are already very broad and deep. There should normally also be free trade agreements, which cannot easily be offered to everybody, because it requires a lot of structural changes in the countries concerned. That is very important.
There is a move to more political cooperation and mobility for security, which many of you have mentioned. It is very important to have visa facilitation, but other countries need to do more on border management and documentary security etc. There is an outreach – a greater offer.
Then there is the multilateral component because, as I have always said, the neighbourhood policy, along with the Eastern Partnership, is in principle a bilateral offer – as Mr Swoboda rightly said – but it also has a multilateral component that enables countries to work with each other, which, as in the case of the south, is always more complicated.
This is an offer, and by that offer we are trying to bring the countries closer to us. We do not have the same instruments as one has with candidate countries, where in order to enter the ‘club’ they have to comply with a certain number of conditions, and if they do not, then they cannot enter. Therefore, we have to work with initiatives, with instigations and with positive momentum. That will take time, because this is also a question of societal change, but it is very important to be there and offer and agree to that.
I also agree with those who said that we should not see this as a threat to Russia. That is true, and at the same time this is a small group of six eastern partners, together with the European Union, and on an ad hoc, case-by-case, basis we can here or there maybe associate Russia or Turkey.
However, the Black Sea synergy is a very important initiative on projects that reaches out to all partners, including Russia and Turkey. It is a young policy and one has to give it a chance. We cannot implement a strategy in just one year. We have to be patient with this very important policy, which we must continually try to develop."@en1
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