Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-07-Speech-2-307"
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"en.20050607.27.2-307"2
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"Ladies and gentlemen, while acknowledging the importance of the goals of the report by Claude Moraes and noting the personal sense of responsibility displayed by the rapporteur in seeking out the truth, at the same time it must be said that the process of creating the report has once again clearly demonstrated that, in creating a common minorities and anti-discrimination policy in Europe, it is absolutely vital and essential to take into account the special, unique, historical and political situation of each country; the importance for a country of preserving its identity and its jurisdiction in solving issues regarding minorities and discrimination against them must be respected. As this report was being written, there were on several occasions manifest failures to observe this rule in the proposals submitted by individual Members who are ignorant or inclined to be biased, that is, in the unjust complaints about the policies on minorities implemented by Latvia and Estonia. This is absurd, since the attitude towards minorities in Latvia is no less accommodating than attitudes in other countries.
Ladies and gentlemen, taking into account these repeated open, unjustified and uninterrupted attacks on the two states who have suffered most of all from the totalitarian Soviet regime, I call upon you to understand and acknowledge, at last, that in different cases a solution to problems must be sought which is not standard but that a minorities policy must be created which is individually tailored to the circumstances of each particular state. Thus, for instance, our colleague Tatjana Ždanoka began with an attempt to include in all possible wordings of the resolution the issue of non-citizens that is peculiar to Latvia: she tried to highlight it and frighten Europe with Latvia’s over 400 000 non-citizens, and she created the situation that in many parts of the text of the report’s conclusion various legal terms and such fundamentally separate concepts as ethnic minorities, immigrants, refugees, stateless persons and non-citizens, which are not one and the same, are nevertheless confused. The result is a reduction in the report’s objectivity and quality.
It is time to remember that the repression and destruction of the indigenous nations of the Baltic peoples, and the in-flows of economic migrants are the reasons why, during the occupation of Estonia and Latvia, the ethnic composition of the inhabitants of these states changed significantly, giving rise to a comparatively large number of non-citizens with foreign ideologies. Latvia has been very fair, and the legislature has, for its part, given special rights to the persons who were settled there during the occupation period – rights to naturalise at any time. The fact that many have not wished to do so should be viewed as the expression of their individual wishes, and not as a complaint against these countries. Not just the number of citizens but also their loyalty, their respect for the country, its language and its values ought to be the criteria for gaining citizenship and consolidating society. Exaggerations should be avoided, and it should be understood that, for example, in the case of Latvia a devalued granting of citizenship under the influence of external pressure would constitute discrimination against the indigenous nation, and its identity and the state’s existence would be at serious risk."@en1
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