Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-16-Speech-3-182"
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"en.20090916.17.3-182"2
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"Madam President, President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, the Western Balkans need Europe and we Europeans need stability in the Western Balkans. The Western Balkans are a central part of Europe and we must do our utmost to bring this important part back home to Europe. For that reason, these are the right proposals.
The reality of life in this area has been described; the depressingly long queues at visa offices, the young people with no prospect of making an application to leave the country and get a taste of life in Europe. A lot of people experience this area as a prison, where they have no contact with the outside world. We all want to put an end to this and, in my group, Mrs Pack, Mrs Bildt and Mr Posselt are working on this with a great deal of dedication. We all stand for this.
What worries us is that, as a result of the different treatment of the states in this area, there will be separatist movements and different classes of citizens in the area of the Western Balkans will be created, which could certainly lead to problems. However, the citizens in the European Union equally expect security. That means that the standards that Commissioner Barrot described here today, namely security standards for police cooperation, in the fight against illegal immigration and economic migration and for biometric data, are the agreed minimum standards which represent the rules of play. Our citizens expect those rules of play to be adhered to.
That brings me to my second point: there must be no foreign policy concessions on the question of visa waiver. We should not give these states a free rein. The rules of play are clear and anyone who abides by them has every chance of having visas waived. The pressure on the states which have been unable to improve their standards hitherto, despite EU aid, should not let up.
These are the two flanks that we in the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) consider to be right. We trust in the evaluation that the European Commission has carried out and can therefore approve the present step."@en1
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