Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-26-Speech-1-027"
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"en.20050926.11.1-027"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Prescott, Mrs Wallström, together with my group, I gladly endorse all the words of welcome that have just been addressed to the observers from Romania and Bulgaria. If we do not want our words of welcome to be mere lip service, however, we must have the courage to accept all the implications of our choices. The now fast-approaching prospect
for which my group has, moreover, given its full support - of these two countries entering the European Union in fact only makes a genuine change in direction for the EU’s economic, monetary, budgetary, fiscal and trade policy all the more urgent and decisive. With 15 Member States, this was necessary; with 25 or 27 Member States, this becomes essential.
Mr President, you have spoken of an identity crisis. I believe you are right. To overcome it, political choices have to take precedence over market requirements, because if, in the name of international competition, we are content with adapting ourselves to globalisation as it is today, then there is quite simply no room either for social issues or for solidarity. With the mass unemployment, rapid growth in job insecurity, large-scale poverty and glaring inequalities that we are experiencing, it would be politically irresponsible and socially explosive to remain with set ideas about free competition, restrictions on public spending, social and fiscal dumping and, the icing on the cake, miserly budgets. As the elected representatives of our fellow citizens, we have a duty to bear witness to the profound uneasiness that, in one form or another, is being expressed throughout the whole of Europe. What can Parliament undertake to do in the coming months to send out to Europeans the positive signals they are waiting for? I would put forward three proposals.
Firstly, we are going to be judged on our votes on a whole range of draft directives. As of this week, the one aimed at totally liberalising rail transport and, in the next few weeks, the deeply symbolic Bolkestein Directive, which Mr Barroso has been very careful not to throw out with the others. These will be followed by the texts on regional transport, port services and working time, without forgetting the opinions that we will have to provide on the negotiations at the WTO and, in particular, on the General Agreement on Trade in Services. If we want to satisfy expectations, we would be wise, in each case, to adopt a clearly anti-liberal and very demanding stance on public services.
Secondly, we should take a number of significant political initiatives on major issues of civilisation. One single example: war and peace. In order to express our rejection of war, and particularly of the involvement of EU countries in such a venture, let us invite to Parliament Mrs Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, whose cry of pain, truth and humanity is moving opinion on both sides of the Atlantic.
Thirdly and finally, and in conjunction with the first two areas, let us contribute to giving our fellow citizens their freedom of speech. Let us organise debates by all means, but let us make them genuine, uncensored debates in the 27 Member States of the enlarged Union on what ought to change in the Union in order to breathe life back into the European dream."@en1
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