Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-583-000"
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"en.20120215.26.3-583-000"2
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"Mr President, first of all, I am very happy that all of you have put your questions vehemently, critically, with the utmost sincerity, to the Commission and, on the whole, I feel encouraged by what you have requested from the Commission.
That is my current thinking. I say this to you: a proposal that I shall make to my fellow Members of the European Commission to gain the agreement of the College in order to request this mandate; a discussion that I shall conduct personally with my colleagues, with each of the governments which belong to the Council to obtain this mandate, and then we shall to able to make progress.
Mr Berlinguer, you know perfectly well that I am not a conservative. I say this also to Ms Bilbao. I feel encouraged by your resolution. I say this, in particular, to Ms Mazzoni and I say this also in a very particular way to your colleague, Mr Kósa, who spoke extremely clearly in favour of this treaty. These are the steps that I intend to take. As I usually do what I say I am going to do, I shall be particularly careful to report to you on these steps extremely clearly and openly, so that you are informed about any difficulties that I may encounter. However, I am going to make progress on this issue in the context of respect for the Charter of Fundamental Rights, of the Convention and of the Treaty. I am going to make real progress in the coming weeks along the lines that I have just explained to you.
I have listened very attentively to you, ladies and gentlemen, on a subject in which I am, for a number of reasons, personally involved in my public life, namely, the place of people with disabilities, whatever their disability or illness. I believe, indeed, as Ms Harkin said when she spoke about a citizen’s Europe, as Ms Lichtenberger said, that those with the greatest difficulties, with the greatest vulnerabilities, who have a disability, have more right than others to the accessibility to which you, Ms Lichtenberger, referred.
Many of you, Mr Morganti, Ms Băsescu, Ms Blinkevičiūtė, Ms Werthmann, Ms Ţicău, Mr Romeva, have mentioned the number of people – several million – who suffer from a disability and, particularly, from a visual impairment. In my case, to pick up on what Mr Cashman has just said, I find the current discrimination towards these people intolerable. I say this also to Ms Prendergast and Ms Swinburne, who spoke on this subject.
We are involved in a dialogue with our international partners and the Commission intends to work, as it has been encouraged to do by the view of the European Parliament, to advance the rights of visually impaired people. Before embarking on a legally binding treaty, as you wish to do and to which I am open – and I shall tell you under which conditions – we must, ladies and gentlemen, and I would ask you to understand this, identify what should be the content of this text so that it genuinely provides satisfactory solutions to the problem of discrimination against people with disabilities.
I am a very down-to-earth person. I am very sensitive to this cause. I have worked on it since the beginning of my mandate as European Commissioner through meeting with associations dealing with visual impairments, and I met with them again just a few days ago in Spain and at their European Federation in Brussels. I met people from WIPO.
I have also – Ms Auken, Mr Becker, as I am talking about practical solutions – actively worked on a memorandum of agreement that I signed personally some months ago, in September 2010, between publishers and visually impaired people. This agreement provides for the introduction of structures, a network of intermediaries which will enable the circulation and distribution to visually impaired people of works accessible throughout the entire European Union. I told you what I could do immediately and I am committed to that. What we must do immediately is to work with publishers and with associations for visually impaired people on these concrete steps forward and we shall continue to work on the most effective text of a potential legally binding treaty.
Today, there is a considerable distance between the compromise text which has been drawn up and the concrete progress that we must make. Nor is it clear, indeed, that it is sufficiently useful, in particular, for visually impaired people. I would therefore say to Ms Harkin, Mr Paška, Mr Jahr, and to each and every one of you, that what I think is needed for genuine progress – and not speeches, wishes or texts, of a merely technical or legal nature, as the Commission sometimes does – for genuine practical progress, I must be sure of the quality of the content and, in this respect, we have made clear, constructive suggestions to all our partners.
How can we embark, as you wish, on producing a legally binding treaty? If I want to do that, I need a mandate from the Council. First of all, I need an agreement from the College. I think that I will get it. Furthermore, I need an agreement from the Council and I shall ask for this mandate in order to negotiate a legally binding treaty, subject to approval by the Commission.
However, Ms Auken, you have said that all Member States agree on this. That is not the information that I have. Today, a number of states, for other governmental reasons, do not yet share this line of thinking. What I need is sufficient support. I am perfectly happy to ask the Council for a mandate, but if I fail, if the Council refuses to give me one, we shall have made no progress. Consequently, I should like, over the coming weeks, to find a satisfactory agreement at the level of the Member States in order to be able to pursue actively the idea of a treaty. Ladies and gentlemen, I shall meet the governments, one by one, and I shall ask for this mandate in a forthcoming Council meeting. However, I want to be sure that I will get it and I want to be sure that it will bring about a practical change to the situation."@en1
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