Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-241"
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"en.20061115.18.3-241"2
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"The Baltic Sea Strategy for the Northern Dimension is certainly a significant document. It reflects the merit of Alexander Stubb, the rapporteur, and the entire Baltic European Intergroup who have worked hard on it.
The storms of the Cold War have caused larger damage to the Baltic coast than to any other sea coast in terms of political, economic and ecological damage. We can feel it even now, when the Baltic Sea is becoming an internal sea of the EU. The intervening Russian coast provides a great opportunity to cooperate with this country.
The region, with its population of 85 million, is one of the economically and socially strongest in the EU; the welfare state model is implemented in many areas here. However, differences in the standards of living among these countries are shocking, and the increase of social exclusion in some places is threatening. This Strategy should help to overcome such trends.
Particular attention has been paid to environmental protection, economy and transportation. All three elements of this triad are highly dependent on energy and energy security, which is violated when any one country exerts excessive potential or ambition. Therefore, the countries in the region need a common energy market. Even more attention should be paid to efficient energy use and to renewable energy resources. Discussions and specific actions concerning nuclear energy are inevitable. At the beginning of December, a power bridge will link Estonia and Finland and it must be reinforced with similar bridges between Lithuania and Sweden, and Lithuania and Poland. The Strategy urges more rapid and firm networking of highways, railways and seaways in Northern and Central Europe. Poland is right at the main crossroads. If Warsaw fails to pay more attention to these projects, they will remain on paper for a long time.
The Baltic Sea is shallow and very vulnerable ecologically. More than 60 tanker accidents and 400 illegal oil spills at sea are recorded every year. The sea absorbs the unprocessed wastewater of a population of over a million living along the coast. Therefore, seacoast protection zones must be established and extended, and more restrictive environmental protection standards must be applied than the ones presently provided for in the EU directives.
The European Union would like to have not merely a good but also a reliable neighbour in the Kaliningrad Region of the Russian Federation. Georgiy Boos, the governor of the region, is treating Kaliningrad as a Russian window on Europe, as well as the EU’s on Russia. We would like this window to be wide open to fresh winds of cooperation. A wider opening of this window, or an opposite process, would manifest the direction that Russia is moving in.
The proposal to assign a separate budget line for funding this Strategy would demonstrate the affinity and innovation of the Baltic region. I am convinced of its worth, since it may and must become a laboratory for new ideas, projects and innovations which are equally significant on a larger scale."@en1
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