Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-16-Speech-3-074"
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"en.20020116.6.3-074"2
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"Mr President, firstly I would like to wish the Spanish Presidency luck for the ambitious programme they have presented here this morning. The speeches by certain Members have reminded me of what Marx said, not Karl but Groucho, about certain literary critics who were so busy writing criticism that they never had five minutes to sit down and read a novel.
Mr President, I would like to say that the Spanish Presidency has a series of objectives which are being presented straight away, both in terms of the internal dimension of the project and of its external dimension. It is clearly a question of uniting wills, forging consensus and identifying the right direction so that the European Union can make progress. This will require two things. It requires a method, and at Laeken the Convention method was chosen, which is an innovative method: Europe cannot be built on the basis of concentric circles. And it requires ambition.
I do not agree with what my good friend Mr Watson said, though I congratulate him on his appointment as chairman of the Liberal Group, because I believe that Spain is very well placed to contribute to overcoming one of the historic challenges of our times, which is how to reconcile unity with diversity prudently and judiciously. How to provide the European Union project with a well-tuned orchestra, well-tempered, as Mozart said, which is guided by democratic impulses and not by a blast of a bugle like a battalion.
Mr President, when freedom was savagely attacked by the barbarity of 11 September, it immediately became clear that notions of security, defence, cooperation, external policy and development aid are interrelated and must be based on a common awareness that the threats and dangers of terrorism affect all of us alike and that we must therefore respond to them as one.
Mr President, I would like to say a couple of things about Latin America. This Parliament thinks that Latin America does not need gifts, but rather opportunities. But we also believe that we sometimes have to move on from beatitudes to accounting books and we have, therefore, significantly increased the quantities proposed by the Commission for cooperation with these regions in 2002 and we have presented an ambitious catalogue of measures aimed at giving content to that strategic objective, which the Heads of State and Government drew up at the Rio de Janeiro Summit, of creating a strategic bi-regional partnership. Therefore, as the Presidency-in-Office has stated, we hope that the Madrid Summit will be able to send a clear and well-defined message of the Europe’s new commitment to Latin America.
I am absolutely convinced that the storey which this Presidency has to add to this Community building will be a match for the ambitious priorities they have presented to us this morning."@en1
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