Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-11-Speech-3-038"
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"en.20091111.13.3-038"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Barroso, perhaps it is a coincidence – although a happy coincidence – that this debate is being held immediately after the speech by Václav Havel, a man who has reminded us how important this process was twenty years ago. I was born just a few kilometres west of the Iron Curtain, but it could just as easily have been the other way round. At that time, I was in the Soviet occupation zone and I saw the Hungarian refugees of 1956, the refugees from the Prague Spring in 1968, such as my fellow Member, Libor Rouček. I see in the Treaty of Lisbon an extension of this process that is bringing Europe together.
It was probably not the intention of Václav Klaus to complete the ratification in precisely the month in which we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it is a happy coincidence that this treaty attains
validity right now, even if it does not quite yet have legal validity.
We now need to take decisions with regard to people. I do not envy you this task, Mr Reinfeldt. However, I do have a request or a question for you: are you prepared, in your talks with the Heads of State or Government in the next few days, to ensure that in this Europe, we also attain something close to a geographical balance that is representative of the new Europe? Are you also prepared to ensure a stronger representation of women, perhaps? I am not just saying this on account of Mrs Malmström and Mrs Wallström, who are sitting here. Can Europe today afford to have top positions – and I am speaking to my own group too – in which so few women are represented? Is that the image that represents Europe to its people today? The President of Parliament has already mentioned this. You are not, of course, to blame if this does not happen, but I ask you, at least during the talks, to point out that we need a better geographical and, above all, a better gender balance in Europe in order to show that we represent the whole of the European population.
You mentioned the High Representative. Are you prepared, Mr Reinfeldt, to also ensure that it is made clear that, when you nominate a High Representative, he or she will not assume full duties until ratification has taken place or there is a decision of this Parliament? I know that there will, of course, be a gap in time, but it must be clear that, in his or her joint role as Vice-President of the Commission, the High Representative requires approval by Parliament. We will need to be very careful and conscientious in giving that approval. We need to make it clear that, particularly in this area, we will perform our duty and, Mr Barroso – I believe we can promise you this – although we want to carry out these hearings properly and carefully, we also want to reach our decisions as quickly as possible, as the citizens of Europe demand that we work and come to decisions quickly rather than spending months discussing various people.
The last point that I want to touch on is the financial crisis, which you have mentioned, because that is also something that causes us great concern. You rightly mentioned unemployment, which is also set to rise further. You also said that we cannot withdraw the support measures while we still have unemployment on this scale, as the citizens also expect us not to accept as high a rate of unemployment as we have now in this new Europe.
There is also the debate about the financial transactions tax. I know that it has already been assigned to others five times, but it is probably also an important debate to show that we are serious about the control but not because we now want high tax burdens. However, we need to make it clear that we want to use all of the instruments to help to stem speculation and that, above all and in order to prevent a new crisis, resources are available to help those banks that, in spite of this, still get into difficulty. We need to send out clear signals in this regard.
The head of Goldman Sachs recently said – and we need to let these words sink in slowly – ‘I am just a banker doing God’s work’. That is surely a particularly cynical and perhaps blasphemous statement, but it shows the sort of mentality that many of these people have. They are speculating in the name of God, to put it bluntly. We do not want to claim that it is God’s work that we are doing with our financial regulation, but rather it is work for the people, to protect the people of this continent from unemployment and speculation, and that is what we need to do. I hope that you will still be able to send out clear signals along these lines throughout the remainder of the Swedish Presidency."@en1
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