Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-15-Speech-3-029"
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"en.20020515.2.3-029"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to thank both the two previous speakers and the two rapporteurs for their work. I wish to thank them because transatlantic relations are currently going through a very difficult phase. We must admit that this community of values has been the most successful alliance in the history of mankind; it has brought prosperity, democracy and human rights not just to Europe and North America, but to many other parts of the world too and it has brought about much that is good in this world.
We must also admit, however, that a great deal has gone wrong since this triumph. There is an excess of unilateralism causing difficulties on the one side and there are weaknesses on the other side, namely our side – mainly our inability to make a military contribution – which generate the difficulties we see on a daily basis, some of which have already been mentioned. The International Criminal Court, Kyoto, trade issues or the fact that the fight against the fallout from 11 September is making NATO look like it no longer has any teeth; all this gives us great cause for concern and, although it is true that progress is being made in the Middle East, we still have no joint presence in Jerusalem or Ramallah and I think that this is where the starting point must be.
I think that there is no point in starting with individual problems, such as the question of hushkits or bananas, because this is a race you can never win. Just as you think you have got one problem sorted, another two spring up. So this starting point alone gets us nowhere, which is why I am so grateful to the rapporteur for including mainly structural improvements in his proposals, for suggesting that we move the discussion in a new direction, that we develop structural relations with the United States over and above NATO, which was one of the intentions of the transatlantic agenda in the early and mid-1990s.
The question is: can we find solutions using bilateral trade dispute settlement mechanisms without disturbing multilateralism, do we discuss these issues in connection with the transatlantic market place or do we conclude an agreement between the United States and the European Union, a master agreement as to how relations can be improved here, because this sort of agreement has the incalculable advantage of involving the American Congress. The European Union has agreements with almost every country on earth except our closest allies, the United States of America. We run from administration to administration, knowing full well that it is only ever half the game and that the American Congress is immensely important in this game. That is why we need to find a framework which allows American politics as a whole to be involved, a structural reference framework, and I hope that the Council and Commission will adopt more intensive initiatives here than has perhaps recently been the case."@en1
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