Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-014"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20040210.1.2-014"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Thank you, Mr President. Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it was almost a year ago exactly that this House discussed SARS. Now, as then, many Members are saying that globalisation and the European internal market, which are essentially good things, can work well only if we also take action to protect people’s health. This is where Europe needs to take joint action, for viruses and bacteria do not, after all, stop at borders. Let me pick up Mr Mulder’s example. Düsseldorf’s airport is very, very close to the Dutch border, and so it is from Düsseldorf that many Dutch people fly when they go on holiday, and a lot of people from the part of North Rhine-Westphalia around Düsseldorf fly from Schiphol. People will not understand why safety measures at Schiphol have to be quite different from those in Düsseldorf. In any case, viruses do not make a stop at the borders, which are themselves established in different ways by nation-states, and so I believe this is where we need more measures taken at European level. A year ago, I backed Commissioner Byrne when he was trying to get more competences to combat this sort of threat included in the European constitution. Admittedly, he does often overshoot the mark, and when he did, I told him so, but, in this case, he really is right, and we should be behind him.
Although the Convention did not achieve what we actually wanted, progress has been made, and that is another reason to press for a European constitution, which will better enable us to combat these dangers.
I would like to conclude by taking up Mrs Roth-Behrendt’s point about research. We do indeed have to do more for medical research, and when we do, we must not think only in terms of products that are capable of being used in the short term. The protection of people’s health is a research objective too, one that it is worth pushing, one on which it is worth spending money if there are no firms willing to do it in the short term. Dangers can present themselves without warning, and so we have to be prepared, even if industry has made no effort by the time the danger arises."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples