Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-07-Speech-1-135"
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"en.20080707.18.1-135"2
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"Mr President, this is the fourth time in the last few months that we have spoken on the same issue. The results are modest, as modest as is the attendance in this Chamber tonight. This is, perhaps, a shocking thing per se and a matter of concern.
Roma people are a pan-European ethno-cultural community which does not have a nation state. Roma were already present in Europe when the European nation states were established. Those states kept them in misery, when not in slavery, or sent them to concentration camps.
The European Union enlargement was the last act of Roma liberation. Roma are today European citizens. Perhaps they are in absolute terms the truest European citizens because they are only Europeans. Their cultural, social and economic integration is a European challenge.
Therefore we must communitarise the Roma policy. A strategy which only makes recommendations to the states, leaving them the ultimate choice and the ultimate responsibilities, simply does not work.
On the other hand, what we are seeing today in Italy is the ugliest face of the dangerous phenomenon of the renationalisation of Europe. It is the national populist expression of this phenomenon. The Italians do indeed have the right not to be afraid, but for any Italian citizen the present racist policy of its government is most frightening.
Today fingerprints; tomorrow forced work; the day after tomorrow concentration camps – and then not just for Roma but for any other alliance.
We have asked the Commission to check the conformity of the Italian legislation with European Union standards. Nothing has been done. The checking was postponed in order to wait for the legislation to be adopted. Now the situation is worse. We must take action and use the instruments provided by the Treaties in order to stop these dangerous racial developments in Italy, thus discouraging similar approaches elsewhere.
We must not wait for another holocaust before we organise new referendums to support European integration."@en1
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