Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-01-Speech-3-091"
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"en.20090401.14.3-091"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I hardly dare take the floor here any more; given the overall atmosphere here in plenary, I hardly dare ask questions any more. Of course we are all against discrimination, but one dare not question the route we are taking here for fear of being pushed into a corner.
Ladies and gentlemen, we do all agree on the destination here, and I would appreciate it if we could all refrain from suggesting otherwise. What we are arguing about is the route, and that must be a legitimate subject for discussion, even by the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats.
First of all, I have something to ask the Commissioner: given that the old directive, the existing anti-discrimination directive, has still not been transposed in ten of the Member States – given that infringement proceedings are underway against ten Member States – we seriously have to ask ourselves why we need to revise this directive when the old one has not even been transposed yet. Is that a serious question that we are allowed to ask? That is why referral back to committee really is an argument that we should be allowed to raise here.
On the second issue, too, we are allowed to talk about the content. For example, there is the question of why the churches, which were close partners of the Left when it comes to the protection of refugees, are now coming to us. The churches, which used to be your partners, are now coming to us and saying that they have difficulties with certain wordings. When media people, newspaper publishers, come and tell us they have questions, we should discuss those questions seriously. When we discuss families, the Commissioner says that he does not want to impose anything on the Member States, but, of course, what we are doing with this directive is harmonisation by the back door. The list goes on. There are various arguments that could be raised that give our group cause for concern, considerable concern. It is possible to raise these things, even if one is committed to fighting discrimination.
The Left in this House today is very pleased with itself, because it is once again creating new legislation on a number of points. We should therefore be allowed to wonder whether, in the end, the legislative approach will actually bring many new benefits for the people we are trying to protect. There are other basic values that are worth taking into account: for example, if we are to include private contracts as the Socialist Group in the European Parliament wishes – not just commercial contracts, but also private ones – we must be allowed to wonder whether contractual freedom is not an important basic value that we in Parliament should be protecting.
The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats is opposed to discrimination, and will always work to combat it, but we must be allowed to argue in this Parliament about how to do so."@en1
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