Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-23-Speech-3-046"
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"en.20021023.1.3-046"2
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"I should actually like to congratulate your colleague Mr Pat Cox, President of this Parliament, warmly on his excellent contribution during the European Liberal Democrat Conference recently held in England. He made every effort to point out to his Dutch fellow party members that their attitude towards enlargement was totally untypical of true Liberals, because we know that the Liberals have always been keystones of European integration, that they are particularly kindly disposed towards extending the international rule of law and have always used this as a basis of their movement on principle. I am delighted that the bookkeeping obsessions that are currently doing the rounds in the Netherlands in combination with frightening scenarios in those circles have been contradicted in a way which can be described as truly impressive. I am indebted to him for this. His words will help ensure that, with the support of Her Majesty's constructive opposition, the Netherlands will certainly not be adopting a conflicting position. I have to say that the European Parliament, from all manner of quarters, has also done what was necessary in this matter.
I have also listened with great interest to our good friend Mr Berthel Haarder, who spoke about Kaliningrad and said that the interests of the Lithuanians should not be trampled underfoot. Considering it was a speech made by the Parliament's presidency, I think it was worthy of imitation. After all, if we set up a joint committee together with the Duma to discuss issues surrounding Kaliningrad, the Lithuanian parliament will also need to be represented in this committee, not with a view to putting Lithuania under any pressure, but so that this representation could clearly protect Lithuania's interests. The way we view Lithuania and its sovereignty is a litmus test for the way the enlarged Community will deal with small Member States in future. This is why the speech by Mr Haarder strikes me as particularly important and I should like to thank him for it.
My final comment is about Turkey. Needless to say, there is still a difficult issue to be addressed there. I would plead strongly in favour of Turkey being treated in the same way as the other candidate Member States. This means that, since Turkey is very different from the other candidates in terms of meeting the political criteria of Copenhagen, we have to put another problem to Turkey. If we apply the same criteria, we would need to treat Turkey in exactly the same way as we have treated Slovakia and any other country in the past. This may be difficult for the Turks at the moment, but in my view it is of major importance for Turkey to clearly develop in the direction of a democratic constitutional state that functions well as such, and for them to realise that they cannot participate in the game until they have reached that stage. It should also be a matter of honour for Turkey not to want to take part as a token member, having made half a pledge concerning the constitutional state. As far as I am concerned, we can look forward to the European Council with confidence."@en1
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