Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-14-Speech-2-046"
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"en.20060214.5.2-046"2
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"Mr President, I too wish to thank the rapporteur for his very constructive work. The regulation on local border traffic that we now have before us has proved to be very important to the EU’s external border regions, especially in the east. Traditionally, such border districts are often viewed as peripheral and as being marked by slow development. Believing that to be the case can easily bring that very situation about. It is therefore a question of giving clear signals to the border area populations to the effect that they must be allowed to have contacts in all directions and that their horizons are not to be bounded by their countries’ borders.
Being able to move smoothly across borders is the basis for contacts, friendship, trade and creative innovation. There are no doubt many people living on, for example, the Russian-Estonian border or the Slovenian-Croatian border who will be grateful for the very flexible solution now being proposed.
When it comes to promoting contacts between people, consistency is required. It is not consistent to begin, as now, by taking positive steps regarding local border traffic and similarly positive steps in the form of the bilateral visa agreement with Russia reached in October of last year, and then almost to double the visa charge from EUR 35 to EUR 65, something that the Council of Ministers is in actual fact in a quandary about taking a decision on next week in response to a proposal by France. If that decision is taken, it will not of course be long before the Russian side too increases the charge to approximately the same amount. It goes without saying that this would deal a heavy blow to tourism on the borders. For example, anyone in Eastern Finland wanting to cross by boat to the Russian side of the Saima Canal would be forced to pay more in visa charges than for the crossing itself. Doubling the charge would be wholly contrary to our objective where visa policy is concerned. There is no more effective way of putting a stop to natural contacts between people than by implementing such a shock increase in the cost of a visa. The fact is that the trend should be in the opposite direction.
I therefore call on all my fellow Members to put this period to good use and, at the eleventh hour, to contact their governments in order to forestall this decision. The right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing. We must live up to our values. As Mrs Klamt too emphasised recently, we must not give sustenance to the idea that the EU is constructing walls around itself."@en1
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