Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-013"
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"en.20050907.2.3-013"2
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".
Mr President, none of us here underestimate the seriousness of the terrorist threat, none of us have forgotten or dismissed the terrifying and quite horrifying images from New York, Bali, Casablanca, Madrid, London or Sharm-el-Sheikh. We are all aware of the need to strengthen police and judicial cooperation to destroy these criminal networks. We – the Commission, the Council and Parliament, including, of course, our group – can agree on all of these points. This consensus breaks down where the tightening up of security and the erosion of civil liberties start. I will return to that in a moment. I would add that we also disagree with this kind of excessively common Western conscience that prevents us from seeing the terrible flaws in our own systems. I want to say a few words about that. Finally, we cannot follow those who refuse to consider seriously the roots of the menace we are fighting.
I will start with the tightening up of security and the erosion of civil liberties. In the name of the fight against terrorism, it seems that anything goes. We were given a new illustration of this danger following the tragedy in London. The shoot to kill policy recommended by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and adopted by certain Member States led to the worst case scenario this summer: the death of an innocent person. We think that this method has no place in a state under the rule of law, whatever the circumstances. The end does not justify the means. That is why the concept of a war on terror seems to us to be so dangerous.
It is in this context that we will examine very attentively the content of the new draft directive on data retention. Parliament’s position on this matter was clear, and it must be respected. Europe’s motto must not become
‘supervise, suspect, suppress’. My colleague Mr Catania will discuss this point further during the debate.
Next, I referred to the endless references to our values and to Western values. This leads, whether we intend it or not, to endorsing the idea that the world is divided into ‘them’ and ‘us’, with ‘us’ being the reference point and ‘them’ being the source of the problems. All of us here can still remember Mr Berlusconi’s appalling remarks following the attack on the World Trade Center. We should, he said, be conscious of the superiority of our civilisation. Commissioner Frattini has just used rather different language, and that is all to the good, because Western-centrism makes us blind to the injustice, oppression and humiliation spread throughout the world in the name of the West, from Jenin to Abu Ghraib or Fallujah, or from Grozny to Guantanamo Bay. Then, suddenly, this blindness comes back to hit us like a boomerang.
This leads me to our third point of disagreement, in particular with the UK Presidency, which is refusing to listen to anyone who stresses the truth, even though it is becoming more and more obvious, namely that the war in Iraq, officially justified in the name of the war on terrorism, is, in reality, producing a continual stream of terrorists. Even the Royal Institute for International Affairs itself, for pointing this out very clearly, was taken to task in no uncertain terms by Mr Jack Straw, who said: ‘the time for excuses for terrorism is over’. If condemning this war equates to making excuses for terrorists, then Mr Straw should remember that he encounters such accomplices of terrorism in the very heart of the Council. For example, his new Spanish counterpart, Mr Moratinos, who is well acquainted with the Middle East, declared after the Madrid attacks, and I quote, ‘the strategy pursued by the American administration and other Western countries has failed in a devastating way.’ Mr Prodi himself, who has become more perceptive since he left the Commission, told the newspaper
last year, with regard to the conflict in Iraq, that, and I quote, ‘terrorism, which should have been stopped by this war, is infinitely more powerful today.’
These are the issues - respect for freedom, dialogue between cultures, and rejection of the war - that we must be able to discuss openly and from which we must draw the right conclusions. Then the just fight against terrorism will unite us all and will take a huge step forward.
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"la Stampa"1
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