Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-26-Speech-3-102"
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"en.20060426.12.3-102"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to start by thanking Mr Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra most warmly for the excellent report, and also for the kind words he addressed to the Council. I very much regret the fact that my knowledge of the language is insufficient to permit me to deliver a speech in Spanish, but working alongside the present Commission has been a tough educational experience to which I owe the ability to understand enough Spanish to understand what he said to me, for which I am grateful.
Preparations for the Summit to be held in Vienna on 12 May are in hand, and good progress is being made with them. It has been possible for senior officials to conduct and indeed conclude very important negotiations, and so we can, overall – and not least thanks to the help given by the European Parliament and by this report – be optimistic that the Vienna Summit will be a good one, with real substance and, in political terms, a success.
My participation in the recent meeting at Dornbirn in Austria was in fact, among other things, an indication of the Council Presidency’s great interest in enhanced cooperation at parliamentary level, and it goes without saying that the European Parliament will be represented at the fourth Summit in Vienna on 12 May, as will the regional and sub-regional parliaments of Latin America. That is a very important dimension of cooperation between the regions, and it is something that we in the Council do of course welcome.
We must not lose sight of the fact that this Summit offers a unique opportunity to enhance cooperation, and I can say with a degree of pride that the holding of it was a matter of voluntary choice by the Austrian Federal Government, not least since it would serve as a sign of how important it is to us that this Summit meeting between the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean should, for the first time, be held outside an Iberian or American context. I myself, working alongside the present Commissioner, took part in the first Summit in Rio de Janeiro 1999, and, if we want to draw comparisons between now and then, we have covered a great deal of ground, and that is something we can take pride in. I also particularly want to thank your House and, of course, the Commission too, for the ways in which you and they have helped make this journey a successful one.
The Council is entirely of one mind with the European Parliament and the Commission as regards the EU/Latin American partnership’s most important goals and degrees of action, something that is made quite clear in the conclusions adopted by the Council at the end of February, in which the Council reiterated its determination to further strengthen this alliance in the interests of both regions. It is in our interest to enhance this cooperation if we are to promote our common values and interests and to make a joint contribution to peace and security, to the protection of human right and to greater public participation and democracy.
Social cohesion, sustainable development, the protection and enhancement of the global environment within the framework of the United Nations are topics on which we have established a tradition of good cooperation with our Latin American partners. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the good cooperation between most of the Latin American countries and the European Union where the reform of the United Nations is concerned, particularly over recent months. We are also very grateful to those Latin American states that have given remarkable support in reaching the decision on the establishment of a Human Rights Council.
The third EU/Latin America Summit in 2004 was held in Guadalajara and saw us making some very ambitious commitments, which, in particular, involve both partners in striving to adopt fiscal and economic measures that will facilitate the improved distribution of wealth and appropriate social policies. The European Union will continue to support these efforts at reinforcing democratic institutions, responsible governance and the rule of law and combating drugs and organised crime, including the trafficking in human beings.
The activities engaged in since Guadalajara amount to a very impressive list, of which we, the Presidency of the Council, have taken the liberty of forwarding a copy to your House, for circulation among its Members, and of course to the Commission, since we believe it to be a very important demonstration of what we have achieved in these two years.
The European Union is striving for a purposeful political dialogue not only with the region as a whole and with the various integration fora, but also with the individual countries, and Mr Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra has made reference to the various negotiations that have started, are due to start, and which we are of course keen to continue. It is to be hoped that one substantial outcome from the Summit will be the beginning of negotiations with Central America. We are in fact somewhat concerned about the future evolution of the Andean Community, in that Venezuela’s recent announcement of its secession from it raises questions that need to be elucidated and answered on both the political and legal level. Only a few weeks ago, I met with the foreign minister of Peru, and we had the opportunity to discuss this issue. I can assure all Members of your House, and you, Mr Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra, that we are very much interested in carrying this process forward, although the conditions for that must, of course, be right.
Thinking back to the debates we had in Dornbirn a few days ago, I would like to shed light on a few areas in which further cooperation strikes me as necessary, without wishing to go into detail at the present time. The areas in question are education, training, migration and the protection of the environment, and I believe them to be areas in which further enhanced cooperation will be possible."@en1
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