Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-12-Speech-3-016"
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"en.20071212.2.3-016"2
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".
Mr President, President-in-Office, President of the Commission, the forthcoming European Council will take place in the context of the signature of a new treaty, immediately after a particularly important EU-Africa summit and also – let us not forget – during the first phase of implementation of the Annapolis process.
On the treaty, I believe the Union would be seriously misreading the situation if it thought that this summit agreement marked the end of the crisis of confidence which has dislocated entire sections of our societies from the current thrust of Union economic and social policies. That problem remains intact. We would do better to recognise it and prepare responses to it.
A similar reality check seems necessary in terms of our relations with Africa. The Chair of the African Union Commission, Alpha Konaré, has called on Europe to break with paternalism. He emphasised that Africa ‘could not remain a hunting ground or become a new territory to be conquered’. He lambasted – and I quote again – ‘the logic of the Economic Partnership Agreements with their dramatic costs for the African people’.
Significantly, seven Latin American countries created the Bank of the South almost on the same day as the summit, as a means of emancipating themselves from the IMF and of lessening inequalities in their region. The European Union needs to learn from that and take the measure of this general and growing demand for a fairer, more dignified partnership, including in its way of treating migrants.
Finally, the Middle East, which is apparently missing from the Council agenda: how could the Union agree in Annapolis to be completely sidelined from the structure responsible for implementation of the Roadmap? Does it intend to stand by and passively watch the agreement being violated – as was the case last week with the affair of the East Jerusalem settlements? Generally speaking, what are our true aspirations for Europe and what resources are we prepared to invest in realising them? This is a priority question for the next European Council."@en1
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