Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-15-Speech-3-215"
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"en.19991215.9.3-215"2
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"Madam President, I want to speak here today as a Member of the European Parliament, and not in terms of nationalist rhetoric. I do not personally believe that British bluster is as exportable or as healthy as British beef. I want to look today at the decisions which have been taken in the light of the Commissioner's earlier statement, to which very few have so far referred.
The facts on this matter are quite simple. The decision to lift the ban followed the scrupulous adherence of the UK to the Florence Agreement. When that ban was challenged by the French Food Safety Agency, as they had the right to do, I guess, in terms of their own remit, it was referred to the Scientific Committee, which unanimously endorsed the safety of British beef. That was, as the Commissioner's statement says, "immensely heartening".
So what went wrong after that? With the Commissioner's help – and I pay tribute to him, and I can share his sense of exasperation – we went into a process of negotiation when many said we should not. The result of that was the memorandum of 23 November, which we believe was the beginning of the end of this wretched dispute. What happened as a result of that? We got the decision on 9 December by the French Government that it would continue with the ban; and that did come to most of us as a complete surprise.
I want to say a word to Mr Jospin, and I do so in no nationalist spirit. I believe that his subsequent briefings on this matter have deepened this dispute in the most serious way. Mr Jospin was a party to the memorandum of agreement, which accepted the date base scheme in its entirety. Now he says he would take, or would have offered to take, some beef from some herds in some parts of the UK, irrespective of the date-based scheme. That is a total misunderstanding of the position as he knows it to be.
He has also said that he would rather be crucified by British public opinion than by French public opinion. That is a ludicrous thing for a statesman whom I have always respected to say. The former Prime Minister of France, Mr Mendès-France said:
you have to make choices. You cannot always drag behind public opinion.
Mr Blair took a risk, and I think sensibly so, in taking the route of negotiation when others argued for confrontation, crisis, boycotts and bans. I think he was betrayed by what has happened in the wake of that, and I do not personally believe that is the way to proceed. The alternative, if you are going to choose not what is right but what is popular, is to pursue a process of confrontation between two Member States which threatens this whole institution. We have to be based on the rule of law, we have to be based on some form of arbitration, which allows us at the end to say: "There we are, that is the best opinion we can get. It is unanimously in one direction. Let us endorse it". If we do not do that we are going back to the kind of rhetoric that we have heard from one or two Members in this debate today. Surely this Parliament and this continent have gone beyond the days of Henry V and Joan of Arc? What we need now is a sensible way out of this situation. I would like to end with one question to Commissioner Byrne directly. We do not want this dispute dragging on in the courts for years. Nobody, I think, sensibly does. Therefore, what interim measures can he propose which would make it possible for a temporary lifting of the ban, up to the point where this can be settled between the two governments in an amicable manner? His job is to be an honest broker. I believe he is trying to do it. I think this Parliament should support him in that effort and should talk down those who want to widen the division between our two countries."@en1
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""Gouverner, c'est choisir""1
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