Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-03-Speech-3-027"
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"en.20020703.2.3-027"2
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"Mr President, first of all I would like to thank President-in-Office, Mr Fogh Rasmussen for the programme that he has presented. It will be a presidency which will differ fundamentally from previous Danish presidencies. Cooperation has been expanded in a great many areas and, on top of this, there is the main task that everyone has emphasised, that of successfully negotiating enlargement with no less than ten candidate countries. We all have a great political and moral responsibility, and it is of course a prerequisite for success that all parties have the necessary desire to compromise. The candidate countries have undergone a fundamental restructuring. They have made great sacrifices, but they are now essentially ready. The ball is now largely in the EU’s own court and I think that the Commission has provided a particularly reasonable scheme for funding enlargement in the initial years, and one which clearly separates enlargement from future agricultural reform. This, I feel, is very sensible. It will now be up to the fifteen heads of government to come up with the goods. We will now see whether the EU currently has Heads of State with the necessary quality and strength and with visions that extend beyond short-sighted national considerations. Narrow-mindedness and neo-nationalism must not place obstacles in the way of enlargement.
The second great challenge is the World Summit in Johannesburg and, here, the EU must go on the offensive and courageously show its solidarity with the developing countries by spearheading the creation of the global agreement, which the President-in-Office also mentioned, with practical political obligations and with a precise timetable. There will be a great need to put pressure on the USA, which apparently believes that hunger, poverty and terror can be solved by military means and by reserving financial support for those regimes which passively go along with the American script. I hope that the Danish Presidency will go on the offensive and choose the path of real solidarity with the Third World. There is also a link here with the EU’s asylum and immigration policy, which after all is not just about illegal immigration, as one might sometimes believe. The strident negative debate on foreigners in certain countries should be replaced by a common European policy based on humanitarianism, in which foreigners are not discriminated against socially, in which conventions are respected and in which it is not only members of a well-educated elite who have access to Europe as refugees or for the purpose of family reunification. We must not build a ‘Fortress Europe’ that is based on lowest common denominators but, rather, we should create a link between the much-praised globalisation and our legislation as regards foreigners. With such a policy – and only with such a policy –positive cooperation from the European Parliament can be anticipated. In saying this, I should like to express the hope and confidence that the Danish Presidency will solve the tasks ahead of it, ideally in close cooperation with Parliament."@en1
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