Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-10-Speech-3-434"
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"en.20100310.24.3-434"2
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"Madam President, the first question, on pensioners who own property in Spain, is very similar to another question put to me previously, and the response is very similar to the one I gave previously.
This is a question of clarifying the application of internal legislation in a Member State, which is what I must refer to. I cannot speak on behalf of the Council on this issue, which has legal channels within a Member State. If it had occurred in any other Member State, I am sure that it would have been dealt with in exactly the same way: through internal legal channels.
With regard to the question on vulnerable people, I absolutely agree that we should place a special emphasis on the two groups to which the honourable Member referred. This is even more the case given that we now have one more tool that we can use: the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, insofar as it refers to the rights of especially vulnerable people, whether they be elderly or disabled, their dignity and their participation in social and cultural life. In any case, it talks about protecting them, protecting their physical dignity and mental integrity against degrading or inhumane treatment.
The European Union has developed various instruments for combating this situation, including a detailed study of the situation. I would like to mention an interesting result of Eurobarometer 2007, according to which half of Europeans think that all elderly people, who are the most vulnerable people, are poorly treated, and even abused in terms of the way in which their needs are met. Nearly half of Europeans think that the way society treats these people is negative, precisely because they are vulnerable.
The Member States and the European Union have applied the open coordination method for exchanging experiences between Member States on this issue. On this subject, it should also be said that, in some cases, we are talking about matters that are dealt with in national legislation. They are matters of national competence, and it is therefore the Member States that need to tackle them, on the basis of, among other things, the principle of subsidiarity.
The European Union can support these policies, but it cannot completely replace them. It can support them, but I think that this is something that also relates to the social dimension, which has already been mentioned. I am returning once again to this because I think it is important. The social dimension of the strategy for growth and job creation features very heavily in the document presented by the Commission, and will be debated by the Heads of State or Government.
I think that this social dimension should have room for the problems that you refer to that did not feature so strongly in the previous strategy. I think that in the future – given that we are experiencing a crisis that has a social impact – we need to take the social impact of the economic crisis very much into account."@en1
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