Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-10-Speech-3-034"

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"Mr President, the conflict in the Middle East is today sending shock waves through all the countries of the Mediterranean. This subject will certainly be at the centre of the discussions in Valencia. Sympathy for the colonised Palestinian people, which is felt well beyond Arab societies, is increasing in these countries in particular, due to the endless cultural, social and political humiliations and frustrations that the people suffer and for which they hold Arab and Western leaders jointly responsible. That is why the desire for a dignified life where they and the law are respected is leading the people of these countries increasingly to take the dangerous path of anti-Western nationalism, be it Arab or religious. This development, which is heightened by the international community’s inability to put an end to the massacre and restore respect for law in the Middle East, is detrimental to the cultural and civil dialogue called for by the Barcelona Process. It also demonstrates the urgent and important need for this dialogue. In fact, the only thing the Barcelona Process can do – the challenge before it – is to provide the support it has hitherto failed to provide for democratisation in the countries of the Mediterranean. If we do not suspend the Association Agreement with Israel, then not only will the Israeli tanks have crushed the territories, they will have also crushed Article 2 of this Agreement, as well as Article 2 of all the Association Agreements. What would we be able to say in response to the constitutional of Ben Ali in Tunisia? How would we be able to respond to the aspirations of Algerian society, which has been taken hostage by two camps that are both enemies of democracy? The notion that economic development necessarily leads to democracy is absolute nonsense. The aim of sustainable development, namely ecological development and development of solidarity, in the Mediterranean, cannot be reduced to the concept of the free-trade area. Do we have any idea as to the consequences for employment, public services, and people’s lives, the consequences of the measures to liberalise this trade? From this perspective, democracy is certainly a condition for development. The requirement for democracy is not only a necessity, which some people describe as neo-colonial, it is, in fact, a fundamental element of the relations that we must establish in this region."@en1

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