Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-18-Speech-3-127"
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"en.20030618.9.3-127"2
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"Mr President, accepting for a moment the rapporteur’s central premise that political parties play a central role in contemporary democracy, the role played by them is on a national stage, even MEPs belong to national parties, and they represent their national electorates.
On the other hand, European political parties simply do not exist in any coherent form except in the minds of enthusiastic integrationists. The proposed European Union Constitution prohibits ‘any discrimination based on any grounds such as sex, race, colour, political or any other opinion’. It also says that political parties at Union level contribute to expressing the political will of the citizens of the Union.
Two recent opinion polls in the UK gave figures of 92% and 96% as wanting to leave the European Union, and yet this proposal would deny funding to any party who should dare to represent the views of that very large proportion of its citizens. It therefore goes against not only the spirit but the very letter of your Constitution. It does not promote democracy, it reduces it. With this proposal, you are travelling down a very slippery slope."@en1
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The resource appears as object in 2 triples