Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-12-Speech-4-014"
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"en.20061012.3.4-014"2
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".
Mr President, I should like to thank the Commissioner for the way in which he has worked so cooperatively with the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on this. From Mr Pirker’s contribution, you will see that Mrs Gál has had to do an enormous amount of work in her own Group and I congratulate her on the work she has done to bring people together.
Let me just say to Mr Pirker that we have an expression in the United Kingdom that you put your money where your mouth is. The easiest thing in the world is to say that you are ‘concerned’ or you are ‘committed’; it is much harder to follow it through and give the resources in order to achieve the outcome that we all hope for. We often say ‘red tape’ when what we mean is that we do not want to stop people from doing something that they should not. In this case, when it comes to empowering human rights’ defenders, red tape is absolutely necessary and, I would say, brilliant. When it comes to cost, if, again, we say we value something and we put no resources behind it, we expose our hypocrisy. So that is why I ask Mrs Gál to continue her excellent work. I believe we will reach a compromise with the Council, because the Commission has shown that it is willing to try to initiate that compromise.
Let me also say to the Council of Europe that, although I fully understand its concerns, you cannot have too many human rights’ defenders in the field of defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms. With this agency we are not replicating what the Council of Europe does; we also have obligations in the Union, specifically under the Treaties: the Treaty on European Union and, of course, the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
We have seen in very recent months and, indeed, over the last year, worrying hate-speak used by politicians in certain parts of the Union. We have seen a rise not only in hate-speak but also in racist, xenophobic and homophobic violence, and the Council has done nothing when it comes to Articles 6 and 7. In the absence of action by the Council, is it any wonder that we need an agency that will monitor, report and bring forward recommendations and thereby hold every single Member State to its international obligations? It makes sense.
Finally, let me say this: if we see one individual attacked because of religion, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, whatever, and we stand back and do nothing then we create the conditions that brought about the Second World War. This institution in particular was built out of the ashes of the Second World War with a commitment that we would never turn our eyes or ourselves away from the appalling violence that man commits upon man."@en1
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