Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-02-Speech-3-179-000"
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"en.20110202.15.3-179-000"2
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"Madam President, let me begin by being absolutely clear. I do not accept the principle that somehow Europe has been slow or late. We were the first to make statements on both Tunisia and Egypt. We began talking about Tunisia on 10 January and I put out statements on Egypt last week. We were ahead of everyone else. It is not a contest and it is not a race, but I do not accept that criticism.
I certainly have not forgotten the Middle East peace process. I was speaking with George Mitchell yesterday. We will see Prime Minister Fayyad tomorrow. We are engaged with the Quartet. They meet on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, where I will chair the Quartet on that occasion.
I have not forgotten any of the other issues. Neither have I forgotten Albania, where Miroslav Lajčák goes back on my behalf this week to continue that dialogue. We do not forget everything else that needs to be addressed, nor indeed the issues that we will be debating in this Parliament tonight.
And I am not responsible for what Tony Blair says. I may share the same language; I may come from the same political party, but I am not responsible for him and I will not be held responsible for him either.
Next week I go to the Security Council, on your behalf too. At the Security Council we again have the opportunity to show what the European Union has to offer for these people, for today and for tomorrow. It is really important that I get your support to do this – not quietly, I can be very loud – but properly with cohesion, with direction, with purpose, with a strategy and a plan so that, when the Tunisian Foreign Minister comes to my office, I give him a plan. I do not say, it is very nice to see you, come and talk to me in front of the TV cameras for five minutes. No. I said to him we are going to sit for an hour and we are going to work through your plan with what I think we can offer you. How much money? What can I do? What do I need to change? Which instruments do we need to bring together? How much flexibility have I got now? How much do I need to get? What do you need from us, the European Investment Bank, the African Union Bank, the United States, your other partners? How do we build the plan?
Then I met the Yemeni Foreign Minster and we did the same thing: How do the group of countries that are friends of Yemen put together a new development fund? Do we do that with the Arab countries with whom I have been talking? What do we do?
In my view, that is how Europe should work, and that is what I do every single day on your behalf and will continue to do.
Now I am hoping that I can shortly leave this debate and ask another Commissioner to take over. For that I apologise but events in Egypt, as you rightly say, are moving and I can tell you what we have also been doing while we have been talking in here. We have sent messages, we have spoken to the Deputy Foreign Minister on my behalf. Messages have now gone in directly. The security forces have to intervene right away to stop an escalation of violence. That message has come from me while I am also sitting here talking to you. They need to take responsibility; the government is responsible for getting the army in to assist the people and to make sure that citizens are protected now. Ambulances have to be allowed in and out of the square, because we are hearing that they are not being allowed in. I am going to speak to Vice-President Suleiman as soon as I leave the Chamber. The call is being set up now and that is why you have to forgive me and let me go.
There is an ongoing meeting that is trying to work out a road map with the opposition, now that European leaders are busy on our behalf talking to other leaders in the region and getting them to put in the calls as well. This has to be a telephone tree like you have never seen before of leaders talking to leaders, getting the messages into Egypt. While all this is going on, we have a crisis meeting going on in my offices to work out exactly what we will do in whatever eventuality we find ourselves.
That is what I have done every single day since this crisis began, with what happened in Albania, with what happened in Belarus, with what we did on Sudan, where our special representative led a task force and where Véronique De Keyser saw for herself on the ground what Europe was doing.
That is what we do. Could we do more? Of course. Do I wish there were four of me? Yes I do. Do I think that the tools are right? No. Do I think we have made progress? Yes. Do I think we can do much more? Of course.
Neither do I accept that we were slow to act. We have been in contact hourly with those in Tunisia and with the people in Egypt, with our delegations, to whom I pay tribute for what they have had to deal with in the last couple of weeks, and also in direct contact with the government and with the services. You will also be aware of the other issues that we have been dealing with at the same time, so I do not accept that we have been too quiet. I do not accept that we have not done enough.
If all you want me to do is pop up and be seen to be alongside everybody, I will not do that. What I will do for you is deliver what I think Europe was created to do, which is to put democracy and human rights at the heart of every single action we take and support the people of Egypt and Tunisia today.
I do accept that there is more that we can do. Did you give me all the tools I need with the Lisbon Treaty? Probably not. Did you give me all the resources I need? Probably not, but we will do the best that we can in the context, within which we have the External Action Service and the role that I have. I am not somebody who can go out and give my personal views. I speak for the European Union. I listen to you and I listen to the Member States and I listen to the Commission. That is the role that you set up in the Lisbon Treaty and that is what I will do.
For some of you who were not here earlier, the Tunisian Foreign Minister was in my office today, making his very first visit outside Tunisia to the European Union because I invited him and because he knows how important we are, not just today but next week and next month and next year. When I speak to him I speak on behalf of Europe. He knows that what I say will be backed up by 27 countries, hopefully with the European Parliament’s support and also with the support of the Commission.
That means something to these people. It means something that when we speak it is one message, not necessarily – as people keep saying – one voice. It is the same message, whether it is said by the Chancellor of Germany, by the Prime of Minister of Britain, by the President of another country in the European Union, by any of the 27. We are saying the same thing. That is why the Foreign Ministers coming together on Monday, the conclusions that they drew and the press conferences that they gave on all of the issues that we are grappling with, in our neighbourhood and beyond, are so significant to the people on the ground. We must not lose sight of that in anything else that we do.
I agree with you that we need to be more active on the ground to do more and I absolutely agree that we need to revisit the neighbourhood policy. I have been saying it for a long time. We need to make sure that we have a more diversified approach, that we take each country and we work out what it is we want to achieve with the people of that country – yes, to do more with civil society, yes, to focus on human rights and democracy and, yes, to deal with the common foreign policy issues that we have with them. I agree. I am trying to do it. If you look at the work we have been doing in the last two or three months, you will see a common theme in what I have been saying, which has been the need to be more active in our neighbourhood. It should be our first priority after the setting up of the Service and it needs to be better, smarter and more related to their needs.
I cannot take responsibility for what happened before my time, but I do take responsibility for transforming what I inherited into a strategy for the future that you can be as proud of, as I intend to be. It starts with what we do now and how much we are able to take responsibility and move forward.
I do not underestimate how difficult the situation is and how fast it is moving. I agree with those who have also pointed out that democracy is not a moment in time. It is a process. You build democracy and you bring out those organisations who can work with people to help them understand their democratic rights, what democracy can mean and what it can do – the transformation of society. We use that word in the Council conclusions for a reason, because I believe in transformation, not just for today and tomorrow but for the long term. That is what Europe offers. It is what Europe offered to our neighbours who became our partners and what it offered to its own members. It brought about transformation that will last for generations. That is what we are in the business of. We are not in the business of knee-jerk reactions and responses. We are in the business of doing something that we give to the people for their lifetime, for their children’s lifetime and beyond.
And, of course, in all of this I have not forgotten all the other issues. I am watching what happens in Jordan. I am in touch there. I am of course engaged in what is happening in Iran. The weekend before last I spent in talks with the Iranians and you know how passionately I feel about human rights in Iran because of all the statements I have made, because of all the issues that we have raised."@en1
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