Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-21-Speech-3-052"
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"en.20040721.2.3-052"2
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"I should like to warmly welcome to this House the Netherlands Council Presidency in the person of our Prime Minister. The theme of this Presidency is innovation. Now we have a new Parliament; soon there will be a new Commission. In this connection, we ought to focus on the challenge that this entails rather than the threat emanating from excessive aspirations. Many new people with fresh ideas bring with them a wind of change, and that is what we need, for the public are still not excited by the European Union and the European institutions. Despite this, if everything goes well, they are the ones that really matter in all of this. All those good intentions, though, have led to an endless stream of regulations, and it is unclear which of them we really need. That is why I applaud the fact that the Presidency is prepared to work on keeping objectives realistic and in tune with the expectations of Europe’s citizens. How does the President-in-Office of the Council intend to achieve that? The Presidency wants to devote attention to a possible temporary application of parts of the so-called Constitution. In so doing, is the Presidency not running ahead of the ratification process, which also involves referendums? Are we, then, still taking our citizens seriously? After all, we take complete freedom of choice between a yes and no to this Constitution as a basic assumption. Another thorny issue is the position of Turkey. Will there be a serious assessment of the question of whether Turkey meets the Copenhagen criteria, or is it the case that, after 40 years of promises, we cannot do anything but say yes, even though we should, in actual fact, say no? What is the President-in-Office of the Council’s opinion about recent statements by some Heads of Government who apparently no longer need such an assessment and already know that everything is in order with Turkey’s application? The human rights situation in the world remains worrying. In large parts of the world, intolerance, repression and exploitation are more the rule than the exception. A chilling illustration of this is the religious law that was adopted yesterday in Sri Lanka and which, in effect, bans evangelising on pain of a long prison sentence. Are you prepared to take up this serious infringement of religious freedom with the Sri Lankan Government?"@en1
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