Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-24-Speech-3-079"
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"en.20020424.4.3-079"2
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"Mr President, let me disagree with the previous speaker. We absolutely have to acknowledge the flaws of our own democracy. That was absolutely germane to the debate about the Middle East Unless we recognise our own flaws and inadequacies, how can we ever bring about changes in other democracies? That is what these two reports do brilliantly.
Mrs Díez González' report reminds us that we have agreements with human rights and democracy clauses yet we do nothing. We stand by because the economic factors prevent us from acting. We look at the economic provisions rather than the demands of citizens who look to us to improve their lives through the agreements that the EU and its Member States have signed and ratified.
Mr Van Hecke's report reminds us that there is much that is wrong with the world and brilliantly focuses us on the need for the European Union to speak with one voice. As a delegate last week in Geneva, I witnessed that the Commission is arguably one of the most ineffective Commissions known to those long attenders. Why? Because the Middle East is being used as a ball that is being batted between one group of nation states and another. At the same time, what happens? We stand here in this chamber, enjoying this luxury to contradict one another, to belong to different parties, to have different ideas, to have different sexual orientation, a different colour, a different way of life. That is the reality of human rights abuses. We cannot be narrow in the interpretation of human rights. We need to be global. We need to be expansive.
Finally, a quotation after September 11: 'an attack upon one is an attack upon us all.' That is the reality. That is the immutable principle in the defence of human rights and universal freedoms."@en1
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