Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-07-Speech-2-012"
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".
Mr President, I would like firstly to thank Commissioner Frattini and the Council’s coordinator of the fight against terrorism, Mr Gijs de Vries, for being here this morning. I would also like to thank all the MEPs who have worked and cooperated, sometimes on the basis of discrepancies and sometimes on the basis of agreement, on this report on the prevention of and response to terrorist attacks and I would like in particular to thank my good friends Rosa Díez and Antoine Duquesne for their cooperation and their contributions to this report.
In conclusion, I would like to remember the victims and say that they must always be at the centre of our debate, the main focus of our attention, I would repeat that, on this issue, we must all have the moral strength together with them fundamentally to tackle this issue which is essential in terms of our future.
In the few minutes available to me I would like to be very concise and in particular to summarise the reasons and objectives that have inspired me to present this report in the European Parliament today. What have I wanted to contribute today in this House by means of this report? Simply the little I have been able to learn, my limited and modest experience of what fighting a terrorist organisation has meant, for more than twenty-five years, in my country, Spain, and in the Basque Country.
I therefore believe that the most important thing today is to turn the European Union's traditional approach to combating terrorism, which has usually been by means of an exhaustive list of measures, into what I believe must be a European political project.
You may ask me what the difference is between an exhaustive list of measures and a political project. A political project is much more ambitious than a list of measures. A political project is always the result of a priority, of an emphasis and, above all, of an appropriate and correct mindset. And a political project, above all, has the capacity to be summed up and understood simultaneously by a public opinion that appreciates the efforts of a politician to turn that list of measures into a political project.
Allow me to point out that the recent results in Europe confirm to us that we need a limited number of political projects, because there cannot be infinite political projects. We must have just a few political projects, which are understood by the European citizens and able to tackle their problems. And I believe that one of them is unquestionably terrorism.
Terrorism cannot be fought in a generalised fashion. The security forces cannot take on the correct mindset if we are fighting terrorism in a generalised fashion. We must combat a particular type of terrorism, a particular organisation. It is true that it must always be fought on the basis of the same principles of freedom, of respect for human rights, of the ideas upon which Europe is based, but in each case we must be able to create a particular concrete political project, and we must always be able to specify, determine and measure the organisation being fought; amongst other reasons, as I said before, because that is the only way to stimulate the security forces to put every possible effort into combating a particular organisation.
What is a terrorist organisation’s main ally? Its dispersed nature: we never know where it begins and ends; we do not know what social structure sustains it nor which States, on occasions, are behind that group. But it always has social support, and one of the keys to combating the phenomenon of terrorism is to be aware of the range of the organisation and of the social strata supporting it.
For this reason – and I regret certain amendments to this effect - I regret that we have not had the courage to call the organisation that the Europeans are faced with, which is a radical, Islamist organisation, or one that claims to defend Islam, that is to say Al Qaeda, by its name. It is essential to call it by its name, because that is the only way to combat an organisation: we must be able to say what we are currently facing in the European Union.
The main risk facing the European Parliament is paralysis, inaction, being sure of our principles and values and being in general agreement, but not creating a common European political project to deal with this great issue that is going to affect our present and our future, and treating it as if it were somebody else’s problem: as if it were something that happened to the Americans on 11 September, a few years ago, or specifically to Spain, for particular reasons, on 11 March, but I do not believe that that is what we should do."@en1
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