Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-16-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20080116.2.3-015"2
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".
Mr President, the Slovenian Government is taking over the responsibility of the EU presidency at a time of many challenges. The European countries have to tackle ratification of the Treaty; the spotlight is being trained on the Balkan region; an agreement has to be reached at EU level on the energy package; and new impetus has to be found in order to resolve the conflict between Palestine and Israel.
As has rightly been commented on by colleagues already, the list of what Europe needs to be doing is endless. The range of topics and decisions and the areas of interest and of conflict that have to be dealt with are enormous.
Rather than give lectures to you on what you fail to do or on what others may fail to do in the future, I shall focus briefly on three areas.
Firstly, the Reform Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty: its ratification is essential for the onward development of the European Union.
Secondly, with regard to future enlargements: we must ensure that candidate countries feel they have an opportunity and a chance to become members of the European Union in the near future.
Thirdly and, in my opinion, most importantly, Kosovo and what is happening there, and a peaceful transition from its present status to whatever future status may emerge. We have already seen tremendous success in Kosovo where joint police forces from both ethnic groups are patrolling jointly in each other’s areas, where there is no longer that idea of a single police force for a single people, but a joint police force for all the people of Kosovo.
Your experience, Mr Prime Minister, as a rebel in one sense, as an intellectual but, most importantly of all, as a democrat and as the voice of reason that could lead your country from the dark ages of Communism into the bright lights – sometimes dimmed because of energy crises – and future of the European Union, that kind of image and that kind of imagery is what is most important to the people of Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and, indeed, Turkey.
I look forward to working with you and with your Government. Despite the fact that you may be small as a country, not only are you big in spirit but there is also great quality there. As has already been proven by your own starting of this process, you are not afraid to stand up to the ‘big boys’ when they try to bully you around the place. But, most importantly of all, what you bring is the moral certainty of where you have come from.
What the European Union needs today is new heroes – heroes who know what it is like not to have freedom; heroes who know what it is like not to have the freedom of speech, liberty and democracy. That is the best light that we can shine in the dark corners of the European continent today."@en1
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