Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-01-19-Speech-3-475-000"
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"en.20110119.23.3-475-000"2
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"Mr President, I wanted, if I might, to pick up two or three of the many strands of ideas which have been given to me – first of all, to thank honourable Members and to recognise the strength of feeling and expression of support for some of the work that we are seeking to do in this area.
I think it is important that we see our delegations across the world as a source of being able to see and recognise the kind of discrimination that honourable Members feel ‘bubbles below the surface’, if I can use that expression, and notify us when they see it.
I also think it is important, as I have indicated that we put forward at the last Foreign Affairs Council, that in our human rights work and in the report that we produced, we are also addressing the situation of religious minorities across the world. Christianity has played a very important part in our discussions today but many honourable Members have pointed out that this also needs to apply in ensuring that we have respect and tolerance for other faiths in everything that we do.
I think it will be important to try and get a sense of what is really happening both through our monitoring in our reports and also through our delegations across the world. That I think will give us a greater sense of knowing how then to use the instruments that are available to us, particularly from the Commission side; but also a sense of the political will, not just from me, but – as you have rightly pointed out – as parliamentarians you have a strong voice and a strong role in this, together with the Member States and the ministers involved in the Member States.
As I began, I said that I am committed to trying to make sure that we use what we have better, that we monitor carefully what is happening and that we use the political and economic instruments at our disposal to keep this at the heart of our agenda for the future, and I am very grateful for all the contributions. To those whose comments and questions I have not answered: it is not lack of will, I will consider them very carefully, and all of this will feed into the debate that we will have at the Foreign Affairs Council at the end of January.
As I have already indicated, part of the reason I was very pleased to be able to participate in this debate is that this has been raised once before with the Foreign Affairs Council – but we will come back to it at the end of January – and the concerns that honourable Members have made have resonated and echoed with the concerns which have been raised with me from a variety of different sources, not least from some of the Member States and some of the ministers who have been most concerned about these issues.
I want to make it clear that I did, in fact, talk about Christianity. I began by expressing the reasons I had for specifically going to Bethlehem, and that was to recognise that although I was in the Middle East, I was also in the heart, in a sense, of many religions – specifically on the eve of the Orthodox Christmas. That was a very powerful statement in itself and it was a very personal and deliberate act to do that. I know that, unfortunately, Mr Mauro is no longer in his place to hear my reply, but I hope that he is told that I did in my words indeed mention that.
I want to just pick up two or three things. A number of honourable Members have raised the question of how we use the tools that are available to us to ensure that these issues can be addressed. I want to remind honourable Members that almost all of the trade and cooperation agreements which we have concluded since 1995 have included a human rights clause, and that exists in agreements with, I believe now, 134 countries.
The principal purpose is to demonstrate the shared commitment to human rights which we have, but it also constitutes the legal basis for sanctions in the event of grave human rights violations. Honourable Members will remember that in my previous capacity, it was I who raised the issue of ‘GSP plus’ and Sri Lanka. You will know that we have taken steps to suspend them from that scheme, specifically on the grounds of issues of human rights. It is very important, as honourable Members have said, that we continue to look at the way in which we conclude agreements and the tools at our disposal to do that and to make sure that those levers are pulled if necessary.
One of the things that I think will be very interesting as the Commission begins to look at the future of the GSP regulation is to see whether aspects of that regulation that concern the ratification and implementation of human rights and conventions could be improved.
I also wanted to put the other side of that, which is, of course, the instruments that we use to promote and support democracy in human rights. We are, as honourable Members know, supporting projects worldwide in the fight against racism, xenophobia or discrimination on any ground. We have funded anti-discrimination NGOs in some 60 countries. Therefore, we strike a balance between using the tools at our disposal to ensure that we are able to demonstrate when we feel very strongly that this has been violated, and using those tools – combined with the willingness that we have and the availability that we have – to support those NGOs, in particular, those that are active in the field of anti-discrimination.
I wanted also to just touch on one other area, and that is the role of the delegations across the world and the role of monitoring what is happening. A number of honourable Members indeed raised this as a particular point. I have already said that I think it is really important that we monitor the issues across the world.
I was particularly struck by one issue that honourable Members talked about in a number of contributions and what, in a sense, has become very much more recognised in recent weeks and months but which nonetheless has been a concern to many honourable Members for a very long time: the concern about the way in which religious people, of all kinds of religion, are treated or discriminated against on a regular basis across the world and our need to be mindful and watchful of those issues, not when they become violent – when they become violent, in a sense, we are, of course, bound to act – but before they become violent, too, when this is a regular source of discrimination."@en1
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