Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-26-Speech-3-332"
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"en.20051026.22.3-332"2
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".
Madam President, I would like firstly to congratulate the rapporteur, Mrs Jäätteenmäki, who has done so much good work on the drawing up of this report, and who has been so receptive to the amendments that my political group has presented. I would also like to thank Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner who is here with us so late at night.
It is now ten years since the historic Barcelona Declaration, which led to the first Euro-Mediterranean Summit, which was hosted by Prime Minister Felipe González in his capacity as President-in-Office of the European Union. The prospect of the Euro-Mediterranean association that was opened up at that time gave us enormous hope. It is true that the results have been irregular and that there remains much to be done, but it also true that the obstacles and difficulties are and were immense, and it is not reasonable to ignore them.
The Mediterranean, the cradle of European culture, has been and continues to be, in part, a sea of confrontations and conflicts. The Euro-Mediterranean partnership makes sense if it is the instrument used to remove those obstacles and to promote dialogue and cooperation between North and South, but also to prioritise South-South relations in those regions, which are greatly weakened.
With regard to the Summit in November in Barcelona, Barcelona + 10, the important thing is to establish clear, viable and realistic priorities, which at the same time must be ambitious. We now have a reference framework, which is the alliance of civilisations, proposed by Prime Minister Zapatero and adopted by the United Nations, by means of the statement by its Secretary-General in July of this year. A necessary condition for achieving the objectives is a reduction in the tension in the region, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the real Achilles heel of Euro-Mediterranean relations. The main objective of this association is to create an area of shared prosperity, making progress on reducing poverty, overcoming the socio-economic gap between North and South, and, as has been said, promoting political reforms, democratisation and the rule of law and respect for human rights.
Many other issues have been arising in this debate: the problem of the management of migratory flows, discrimination against women, the serious environmental problems facing the
dialogue amongst the three monotheistic religions, the need for local and regional cooperation, the fight against terrorism, control of weapons of mass destruction, participation by populations, etc. But above all — and I will end here — the European Union and the Member States are particularly affected by the need for huge amounts of political will and economic commitment and to truly believe that, in relation to Euro-Mediterranean relations, we have a lot at stake.
The Mediterranean is the European Union’s most vulnerable flank and if we do not take this issue seriously, we will pay the price in the future."@en1
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