Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-14-Speech-2-143"

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". Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Morillon has made a comment under Recital D in his report which should, I think, play an important role in this debate. Mr Morillon says that Turkey should try not to perceive the European Union as an exclusive Christian club which wants to keep it, Turkey, out. This premise presupposes that the opposite holds true within the European Union, i.e. that we are not an exclusive Christian club which wants, can or should exclude Turkey on relativistic religious or cultural grounds. The premise should be that a country with a laicistic constitution inhabited predominantly by Moslems which is based on the values on which the European Union itself is founded – i.e. freedom, equality and tolerance – could enrich the European Union. The European Union is not founded on religious values, it is founded on values which we owe to the Enlightenment and which, quite independently of the religious leanings of a person or a country and its inhabitants, find their way into the constitutions of the Member States and, as we have seen during today's debate on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, into the EU's perception of fundamental rights. This means that, as a democratic state under the rule of law with separation of powers and fundamental values as we understand them, Turkey will enrich the European Union. At the same time, however, it is clear from Mr Morillon's report that Turkey is nowhere near meeting these demands. The Copenhagen criteria are, admittedly, economic criteria, but they are also criteria which are centred around precisely these points. The question is, how far have tolerance, democratic rule of law, separation of powers and respect for the separation of powers been put into practice in Turkey? And the answer is, as Mr Morillon's report makes clear, not far enough. Too little progress has been made and Turkey must do better."@en1

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