Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-05-Speech-2-123"
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"en.20090505.19.2-123"2
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"Mr President, this report presented me with something of a dilemma. There is something not strictly rational about singling out seals for special treatment. They are not an endangered species – even the WWF says so. We do not get anything like the clamour about hunting seals on behalf of wasps or woodlice or wolverines or worms.
Then again, democracy is not strictly rational. People are not always calculating machines. It may be, as evolutionary biologists would argue, that it is the childlike features of the baby seal – its large eyes and so on – that on a deep genetic level give us a predisposition towards empathy with them. I do not know. The point is that you open a dangerous door if you say that the voters are wrong simply because their objection to seal hunting is aesthetic rather than rational or ethical. Once you have started down that road, it is a short step to saying that they are wrong to be against the European Constitution or the Lisbon Treaty or whatever.
So, after a lot of thinking, I have reached this view about this report: because it is obviously such a sensitive and important issue for a number of our voters, it should not be decided at EU level at all, but should rather be determined properly through the national, democratic mechanisms and procedures of every Member State."@en1
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