Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-27-Speech-3-012"
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"en.20041027.3.3-012"2
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".
Mr President, in view of current events, Liberals and Democrats in this House will have enjoyed the President–in–Office's deadpan presentation of a Council agenda of almost baroque design. The delivery of his speech at 33 r.p.m. was quite exquisite.
This Council will work through the findings of the Kok Report on reviving the Lisbon Agenda. Advance sightings of that report suggest a surprisingly coherent piece of work. My Group welcomes the prospect of a leaner, more focused redirection of the Lisbon Agenda. I notice, incidentally, that the Kok Report tempers our rhetoric a little: instead of 'the most competitive knowledge–based economy in the world', it talks of 'among the best in the world'. I do not take this as a lessening of ambition. The focus for the Lisbon Agenda should not be international benchmarking. The goal is delivering sustainable prosperity and a better quality of life for Europe's citizens in a way that reflects the innate potential and unique dynamic of European life, not crossing some notional finish line ahead of China or the United States.
The Kok Report rightly stresses the need for European Member States to coordinate better. We cannot run a single market without a single mindset. How many European states are setting their national economic agendas with Lisbon in mind? Not many. Not enough.
What matters this weekend is that the Kok Report does not become a substitute for concerted action by the Council. Welcome it; approve it; restate your commitment to it, but for the good of the European Union, make it real.
The Council will also address the multiannual agenda for justice and home affairs, the 'Tampere-Plus', of which Mr Verheugen spoke. The ambition is to restate the broad scope of justice and home affairs policy in the European Union. Liberals and Democrats welcome that, but Europe has changed since Tampere and this new agenda must reflect that. Europe has never had a greater need of a balanced, liberal approach to migration and asylum. The evident desire in some national capitals to outsource our international legal duties to refugees and asylum seekers to clapboard states outside our borders must be resisted.
'Tampere-Plus' also means 'after-Madrid'. The fight against terrorism and the urgent need for better judicial and police cooperation must be priorities. Liberals and Democrats will be particularly vigilant in ensuring that measures to make us safer in Europe do not erode our fundamental freedoms. The Union will soon have new legislation on procedural safeguards and the rights of defendants, and we remind the Council that those rights are non-negotiable. We also want a commitment to a new third-pillar data protection instrument to guarantee Europe-wide data protection for Europe's citizens. These rights must form the centrepiece of the new agenda.
Yesterday I referred to the Council as the invisible elephant. Now the elephant is here, and I hope that it will listen to what this House says today, reflect on our rights and the way we choose to exercise them and respect the prerogatives of this Chamber, whatever happens during the vote today."@en1
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