Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-06-Speech-3-490"
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"en.20090506.42.3-490"2
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"Mr President, since 2004 I have had many new colleagues from the accession countries here, some of whom I am proud to call my friends. When we talk about the bad times which they lived under, the thing that strikes me most is the way that they say that the really frightening thing, living in the Comecon states, was not the absence of democracy, nor the absence of property rights, but the absence of a secure rule of law. If you were a troublesome critic of the regime, you would not be put on trial. Your life would just be made difficult – your driving licence would mysteriously vanish in the post, your children would not get their place in university, you would be unable to find any but menial jobs.
What worries me is that a similar double standard is beginning to pertain within our institutions. When Václav Klaus came here, Members hooted and gibbered and panted at him like so many stricken apes, and no one was so much as told off. But when we protested in favour of a referendum, 14 of us were fined. Goody-goody Christian Democrats can commit almost open fraud and get away with it, but when an Austrian Eurosceptic photographed people signing in for a meeting which was not there, he was fined thousands of euros for effectively filling in a form incorrectly. You might think that it is not my place to say this. I did not live under that system, but Václav Klaus did, and when he warns against going back to it, I think we should listen."@en1
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