Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-03-Speech-2-483"
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"en.20090203.24.2-483"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Barrot’s response was very disappointing. I would have expected a more positive response from him, despite the legal constraints that he operates under. I thought he might have said that he would do what he could to encourage change in Latvia in the spirit of the European Union’s principle of diversity.
I am from Ireland; I speak English. English is my mother tongue, but I am not English: I am Irish. The reality is that the European Union is made up of many states. Virtually all our states have minorities and majorities who have histories relating to being part of an empire or to being an empire or a colony. We have had to deal with that.
If I moved to Latvia and lived and worked there for a while, I would be able to vote in local elections. However, there are hundreds of thousands of people in Latvia who were born in Latvia but who cannot vote in local elections. That is an injustice, but – I would tell Mr Pīks – it is also self-destructive because, in order to overcome the difficulties and the fears, we must make all of our people welcome in our states. We must encourage them to participate politically. Enabling people to vote in local elections would enable them to feel part of their community and part of the management of their own local communities and would help, as I say, to overcome barriers.
One of the largest migrant communities in Ireland is British. They can all vote in local elections in Ireland. They cannot all vote in national elections because they do not all hold Irish citizenship, but they all vote in Irish local elections and make a very important contribution to Irish political life. So I would appeal to those in this House who are from Latvia – and indeed from any other of our Member States that have minority, or even majority, problems – to bear in mind that, in order to overcome these difficulties and to overcome fear, we have to make people welcome and incorporate them into our political process, not keep them out of it."@en1
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