Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-11-Speech-3-073"
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"en.20061011.14.3-073"2
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I am obliged to you, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, and to you, Mr President of the Commission, for your very exhaustive description of what you intend to discuss at the informal summit. As so often happens when summits are in the offing, we have high hopes of this one. Mrs Lehtomäki and Mr Barroso have told us marvellous things about innovation, immigration, energy policy, the partnership with Russia, and about Darfur. The whole range of our concerns has been put before us in no more than some forty minutes, and I now find it difficult to respond to all these things with the necessary brevity.
If, after the summit, we get a forty-minute summary of what happened there that is just as closely packed with achievements and decisions reached, then I will be a happy man, but I have, at the back of my mind, the fear that we will have the same experience that we almost always have, for we are good at describing our problems, but find solving them a bit more difficult. The President of the Commission is right to say that investment in innovation is indispensable, not only here, but in all the Member States, and particularly in researching and developing energy-efficient technology.
One of the crucial long-term decisions we will have to take over the coming years has to do with the question of whether achieving greater energy efficiency will enable us to cope with the exponential growth in demand for energy around the world. It is worthy of note that enhanced energy efficiency also involves us abandoning an economy founded on extravagance by means of such things as technological developments and investment in research that helps to ensure that the products we are able to develop reduce energy consumption rather than increasing it. Europe is the continent that must lead, and give good example, in this area, and that is why you are quite right to say that our policy on innovation must give priority to innovation in energy.
My second point is that both the President of the Commission and the President-in-Office of the Council are right to highlight immigration as a problem we must get on top of, but the way in which this problem is currently being addressed does nothing to solve it, and I am much obliged to Mr Barroso for describing that so graphically. I do not want to go over again what others have rightly pointed out, namely that sustainable development in what we call the Third World addresses the causes of the immigration problem, but the external borders in southern and eastern Europe are external borders in which we all share; those who manage to enter our territory are free to move anywhere within the Schengen area. Member States cannot then say that they are going to arrange these matters for themselves or that the most they will do is to address them at the intergovernmental level, but that they will not allow any of their powers to be transferred to Brussels, and that I say not least for the benefit of my own country’s government, with which you, Mr Barroso, met today. Germany too must understand that this sort of thing is just not on; this is a lesson that must be learned, even by the German minister of the interior.
Let me add something to what has been said about our policy on Russia. The policy that we, together with Russia, are currently engaged in adopting will be the basis for a renewable cooperation agreement with that country. It is obvious that discussions such as that we are having today, in relation to the case of Anna Politkovskaya, will always be emotional affairs. Mr Saryusz-Wolski, for example, who is listening to me with such attentiveness, is one of those who always get particularly worked up by anything to do with Russia, and so what I have to say, I say not least to him. Is there not a great deal going on in Russia that is not to our liking? To be sure, we want – as you have said – a functioning democracy and market economy to prevail in Russia, but there is one thing about which we must not be in doubt. Quite apart from the issue of whether we are further entrenching or extending Russian democracy, Russia is – even as it is constituted today – an indispensable strategic partner for the European Union.
So let me say that we must indeed talk about the state of democracy in Russia, but we cannot talk down to that country in a lofty and schoolmasterly way. It has to be clear to us that Russia will, without a doubt, be needed as a partner in energy policy, and above all as a partner in the resolution of conflicts around the globe – be they in Iran, in the Middle East or anywhere else – and that it will try to cooperate as our equal and with equal rights, and that equal status is something that we must concede to Russia just as we do to all our other partners. So, then, while I regard dialogue about democracy as indispensable, it must be founded on a realistic assessment of the situation.
I much appreciate the President of the Commission’s reference to Darfur. What that situation shows – and not for the first time – is how vital it is that the European Union, by being the peacemaker that it is, brings people together across religious, ethnic and national boundaries, and, by means of that integration, fosters peace. That is something for the export market, and if you let the wider world have it, that is something to be welcomed."@en1
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