Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-07-06-Speech-3-384-000"
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"en.20110706.21.3-384-000"2
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"Mr President, all these populations are putting a colossal amount of energy into overthrowing regimes that are enemies of freedom and are oppressing them. We cannot help but admire this energy, and it puts paid to the prejudices held in various quarters about the supposed backwardness of the Arab world.
As has already been said, it requires a good deal of the European Union to rise to the challenge of these aspirations. For us to condemn the violence, support those who promote change, impose sanctions on the dictators, start again from scratch the deals we had negotiated with fallen powers, take on board the human, political and economic consequences of the upheaval that is going on, prevent counter-revolutionary attempts, mitigate the causes of destabilisation and rebuild our relationship as one of partnership, is a revolution in itself for the European Union.
Who now seriously believes that Bashar al-Assad is capable of beginning a political process that would involve those who promote democracy and change, and would establish the rule of law? I certainly do not, and I do not think many people do. And yet, there is no appeal to President al-Assad to leave power in our resolution. Nor is there a majority, unless we see proof to the contrary, willing to call the atrocities committed by this regime against peaceful citizens crimes against humanity, which is what they are, and to bring a case before the International Criminal Court through a Security Council resolution.
I do not think we have exhausted all the possibilities for diplomacy. Turkey could provide valuable help on this, if it can persuade the hesitant countries that have been mentioned, especially Russia and Brazil, but also China.
Taking responsibility also means protecting. It means resettling refugees, activating temporary protection, rescuing people at sea. These are the concrete steps that the European Union should be proposing for refugees, instead of organising top-level crisis meetings to discuss EU law. If the EU wants to be consistent, it needs a system that will allow civil society to be involved at every stage in defining objectives and indicators and in implementing and evaluating the EU’s agreements with its future partners. This will represent real change for the European Union. Our partners are now accountable to their people, and their people are eagerly expressing their democratic demands.
Baroness Ashton, you were correct in your intuition and your analysis, well before the revolutions began. At the beginning of your mandate, you said that the validity of the EU’s external policy would be tested in its own neighbourhood. How true that is! If the Union rises to the challenge of these peoples’ democratic aspirations, its role on the new world scene will no longer hang as a question mark over the suffering that is piling up. In the situation as it stands today, it is the status of the European Union in this 21st century world taking shape before our eyes that is at stake."@en1
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