Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-17-Speech-4-118"
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"en.20000217.4.4-118"2
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"The Commission’s stated desire to strengthen relations between the European Union and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and to grant this country the prospect of full integration into the Community would appear to respond to a primary concern: a political entity which respects nations and their sovereignty could no longer postpone sending a signal to these states in south-east Europe which history has shown no consideration for since the end of the Second World War.
Having been crushed beneath the heel of triumphant Communism, this region has not stopped paying the price for the collapse of the Soviet system since the beginning of the 1990s. And yet, under these difficult conditions, especially since the military intervention in the Balkans by NATO, some of these genuinely European countries have demonstrated a sense of responsibility which entitles them to aspire to join the Community.
In this sense, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is both an exemplary and a symbolic case. Exemplary because it proves that the Balkan countries are not at the mercy of fate and that those of them which so wish are already in a position to meet the standard requirements imposed by the European Union in stability and association agreements. Symbolic because it reflects well on the Fifteen’s project to see the birth of a policy which is common to the five countries in the region (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, FYROM and Albania) and which would make economic and political stability a pressing and urgent requirement.
The UEN Group is all the more in favour of sending this signal to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia because it leaves plenty of room for the independence and sovereignty of the states. A satisfactory solution cannot be found in the Balkans without a strong policy of cooperation between the states concerned; but nor can there be any question of blocking their process of integration because one of them is considered unworthy of such promotion.
The Union is simply doing its job when it seeks through its cooperation policy to encourage nations to espouse a platform of common values with it, of which democracy and civil liberty are the cornerstone. It is not its job to subrogate to people in their choices or, failing that, reinvent a new variation on a ‘sense of history’ which perceives self-determination as a one-way street.
The Community construction only makes sense if it creates positive discriminations alone, and the UEN Group hopes that this signal to FYROM and specific action in its wake will help us make a sustainable contribution to the development and peaceful coexistence of the nation states in this fully-paid up part of Europe."@en1
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