Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-10-Speech-3-127"
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"en.20040310.4.3-127"2
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".
Mr President, on my latest visit to the country on which I am reporting – Latvia – I gained the impression that membership of the European Union has still not found its way into the minds of the political elite. They expected the monitoring report to praise the successes of the alignment process. That is not its purpose, however. Its purpose is to analyse the problems of direct and indirect relevance for coexistence within the European Union, so that integration into the European Union can be a success for all concerned.
I was pleased that the Latvian Government’s representative in Brussels and the country’s former chief negotiator considers my work thorough and sound and has confirmed to me that the report correctly identifies the country’s problems.
I would at this point like to express my thanks for the intensive discussions with the embassy and other ministries and state bodies. The information they provided helped me to gain a realistic picture of the situation in the country. I would also like to thank my colleagues for their close cooperation.
Unlike the Commission, I found that the work of the new Corruption Prevention Bureau can be described as effective and promising. I am convinced that it will enable Latvia to overcome its negative image.
When I visited the country, I also met a committed minister of justice, and I am convinced that with her the reforms are in good hands and will bring success quicker than assumed in the Commission report. I can say the same about agricultural policy.
I was also pleased to find that my report triggered a political debate about what is probably the country’s greatest social problem, how to better integrate the Russian-speaking population. The debate surrounding my report included a discussion of how citizenship can be achieved for what amounts to one fifth of the population and how the process can be speeded up. I have borne patiently the accusations, condemnations and insults that have been hurled at me recently in the hope that the debate on my proposals, which after all were backed by the Council of Europe, would have a successful outcome, that is result in higher figures for naturalisation.
Contrary to what some Latvian politicians are claiming, the content of my report and the things that it calls for are identical to those of other European organisations. We cannot accuse the Council of Europe and the OSCE High Commissioner of belonging to a particular political family. It is of course true that in my report I did not satisfy the heroic national pretensions of part of the country’s political elite that considers itself infallible. That was not my aim. I wrote this report with a sense of responsibility to the common values of our European Union. These include the indivisibility of human dignity and I stand by that."@en1
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