Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-13-Speech-2-358"
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"en.20040113.16.2-358"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the issue of cultural diversity is one which we must constantly address. In fact, we do not need to go as far as the WTO; in this Parliament, we have repeatedly debated whether culture and the market are compatible, for example on the issue of fixing of book pricing and on the issue of copyright, and we have seen that there are widely divergent views, not only within this House but also between this House and the Commission in some cases. Within the Commission too, views have varied very widely, and I am referring especially to the previous Commission in this context. Certainly, we battled out the issue with Commissioner van Miert on several occasions.
I believe that cultural diversity, as a sensible countermeasure to the melting pot, is an absolute necessity and I am most grateful to Mrs Prets for producing this very comprehensive and detailed report. I also thank Commissioner Reding for providing such a detailed overview of the work from her own perspective and for pointing out that this House is and should remain the natural ally of the Commission and especially of Commissioner Reding herself.
I would like to thank Mrs Prets especially for stating, in paragraph 15, that this Parliament reaffirms its vigilance concerning the treatment of minority populations and minority languages, including indigenous languages, in the context of the enlarged Europe. This should be made a condition if this House endorses this report.
I believe that in an enlarged Europe, this should apply not only to the enlargement countries but also to the current Member States. There is undoubtedly a shortcoming here, in that in the cultural field – due to what is in my view the disastrous principle of unanimity – we have been unable to launch common policies to provide minority communities and languages with sensible options for their development. Here, we have a core Europe comprising a number of countries such as Italy, where I come from, which have broken new ground, and I say this as a member of a minority which is not Italian by origin but a German-speaking Austrian minority in Italy. There are other countries where this development has, unfortunately, been very sluggish, and I think that this effort and the abolition of the unanimity principle can achieve some progress here. Above all, we must address the fears of those countries which have concerns. I think that minorities and their cultures should be regarded as bridges and not as burdens – and this is where this report can make a contribution."@en1
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