Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-16-Speech-2-088"
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"en.20041116.9.2-088"2
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".
Mr President, there were one or two points made during the debate which I should address very briefly. I hope that when these debates are held in future without my attendance they will, if I may say so, have as broad a base as possible in the points of view we hear.
I should like to say to Mr Samuelsen that the Commission would be perfectly content to hold a debate on the Western Balkans in December. Mr Duff spoke about the trade regulation being done within three months. Again – speaking for myself – the Commission would be perfectly happy to accommodate that reasonable request. A couple of other Members suggested that we should concentrate our support on one place: Famugusta. That would not be sensible. We have to spread our assistance more generally than that.
I wish to make three other points. First, on the Agency based in Thessaloniki, I would like without reservation to thank the Greek Government for its hospitality. It provided the facilities we have used in Thessaloniki. It was an imaginative proposal by the last government, which has been continued by the present one. It has given us a splendid headquarters. Everybody who has worked in the Agency is grateful for that and certainly, on behalf of the Commission, I am also very grateful.
Second, Mr Lagendijk made the point – although he was too kind to put it this way – that there is a degree of intellectual incoherence, which I accept, between the policy which I have pursued vigorously around the world of deconcentrating our management of assistance and what we have been doing in the Western Balkans, which is to establish an agency rather than simply deconcentrate to our delegations. I have to say to justify that decision that my main concern – particularly given the position in the Western Balkans and given the position in Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – the position was so difficult it seemed to me that the most important thing was delivery of assistance. Since the Agency has been so effective it was not right to dismantle it and I thought it sensible to continue to use it as our main instrument for managing assistance. So, I plead guilty to a degree of intellectual incoherence, but the record of the Agency has justified it.
Finally, I do not wish to make my last remarks in this Parliament into the beginning of a hot controversy. However, I would just say to the honourable Member who said that he wished Mr Verheugen, my distinguished colleague, had been able to state the advantages of the Annan plan more vigorously, that Mr Verheugen would have loved to do so, but when he tried in Cyprus, he was stopped. That is a matter of record and was not the happiest episode in this tale. It would have been better all round if during the course of the referendum campaign he had been able to say in Cyprus what he believed the advantages of the Annan plan were. It might have been that he would have given a more balanced view than some of the letters sent out by the government. I very much hope that we can have this debate in as calm a way as possible. I hope that all sides of the argument will be heard reasonably.
The one thing I would like to say is that I recognise, as Mr Kasoulides said, that there is a genuine commitment on the part of many honourable Members to the betterment of everyone who lives on the island. I have no doubt at all about the honourable Member's commitment to that and I hope that we see everybody living a more prosperous, stable and peaceful life on that glorious island in the future."@en1
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