Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-17-Speech-1-022"
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"en.20011217.3.1-022"2
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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, politicians often need to have more than one string to their bow, so that they can adapt to ever-changing circumstances as and when required. Six months ago, our ambitious plans for the Belgian EU Presidency were openly criticised. The more tactful critics advised us to limit our objectives so that we could achieve them and be sure of success. The attacks on 11 September turned our plans upside down and changed the order of the priorities we had set ourselves. Indeed, they upset our plans to such an extent that we had to review our original agenda. Fortunately, we did have other strings to our bow, and this prevented the upset from paralysing our efforts.
At the end of the day, Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we had to achieve a great deal. Let us start with one phenomenon, which fortunately hardly anyone mentions any more. In less than three months, we organised three top-level meetings in Belgium: firstly, an extraordinary Council in Brussels on 21 September, an informal Council in Ghent on 19 October, and one in Laeken last Friday and Saturday. And in spite of the many major demonstrations, of which there were seven in total – there were 80 000 demonstrators in Brussels last Thursday – there were very few incidents: just a few shop windows smashed and the odd case of hooliganism.
That is why I would like to seize this opportunity, if I may, to thank our police, who did a superb job, in Ghent, Brussels and in other towns. They went about their job the right way: a discreet presence, no provocation, broad tolerance which is expected in an open, democratic society, and swift, firm intervention as soon as a certain threshold was exceeded. On the other hand, we did take the other anti-globalisation protesters seriously; we spoke to them and we even learnt a great deal from them. Therefore, I believe and I hope that the gloomy litany of confrontations – Seattle, Nice, Gothenburg, Genoa – has come to an end.
However, above all I would like to talk to you about the content and substance of the Laeken Summit. What struck me yesterday, Madam President, when rereading the summit’s conclusions, is that, in my view, we achieved a great deal during these two days. The general public always hungers for something spectacular to come out of such a summit. But a meeting like that essentially enables progress to be made in Europe. The first – and in my view most important – step forward in this respect is the Laeken Declaration. In recent months the text was drawn up, reworked and perfected. However, the core message did not change: this declaration must heed the growing sense of alienation felt by European citizens. Above all it is intended to go about achieving Europe's renewal in a completely different and innovative manner. To this end, as you are aware, we created the Convention, which will start work on 1 March 2002. The national parliaments and the European Parliament will have a major role to play in this, on an equal footing with the representatives of the Heads of State and Government. In addition to these actors, room has also been left for the candidate countries, the Economic and Social Committee, the social partners, the regions and especially those regions with legislative powers."@en1
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