Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-04-Speech-3-264"
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"en.20020904.8.3-264"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, for me, citizenship of the EU is something like a building block towards enhanced integration, but also of course towards our citizens having a greater sense of their European identity. Looking at the basis for it, though, we find just six paragraphs referring to citizenship of the EU, and, on reading these, we find relatively few rights attached to it, which range from participation in local elections or in those for this Parliament to diplomatic representation or the right of petition.
That, though, can be nothing more than a beginning if we really want to create EU citizenship. The task we have to set ourselves in future is a political one, that of making EU citizenship, as it now is, meaningful and breathing life into it. We are also called on to give thought to how we can actually extend the rights enjoyed by EU citizens.
This report turns the spotlight on our present deficits and also makes very definite proposals where changes are necessary. I very warmly congratulate the rapporteur on the attitude he has taken to this refined analysis and on the very constructive proposals he has made. There is a need for measures to demolish, and quickly, the barriers which exist at present and still hamper the freedom of movement and of residence of people who are called EU citizens, which do not guarantee all EU citizens access to the law and to justice to the extent that they desire, and which, above all, hamper the mobility of students in schools and higher education, of apprentices, and also of teachers and the workforce. What use to us is the best Leonardo programme for the training of professionals, if such things as social benefits are not recognised or if there are yet other barriers standing in the way of real mobility, or if qualifications from university or vocational training in other states are not accorded the recognition that has long been overdue?
We have to think about informing people about what their rights as citizens of the EU actually are and about how they can best make use of them. We have to call for the necessary work to be done in schools and in information offices – the latter including those run by the Commission and by Parliament. Much, then, lies ahead of us. We still have to do intensive work in order that those endowed with citizenship of the EU can feel that they really are its citizens."@en1
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