Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-10-Speech-3-020"
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"en.20100210.8.3-020"2
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"Mr President, Mr Füle, I want to join in congratulating you as a new member of the European Commission and say that it may, in fact, be an important sign that on this very day, the first debate in this Parliament involving the new Commission is actually on enlargement.
In fact, we do not need to reiterate that enlargement has turned out and proved to be one of the European Union’s most successful policies. I wish you every success. Our Parliament will do its utmost to support you in these efforts because those of us here in the European Parliament are actually the strongest proponents of the enlargement of this region of security, prosperity and citizens’ rights, which is the European Union.
In this respect, I think that the statements from the three rapporteurs highlighted the serious work which was done by the Committee on Foreign Affairs and them personally. I want to congratulate them on this and say that these three reports which we are discussing today were adopted by a huge majority in the Committee on Foreign Affairs. I believe that this will also be the case today.
I want to stress that we wish to use our reports to give a very clear signal to the three countries as well, even though the general debate will probably dilute our messages to some extent, that we remain committed to the process, but that there are issues which cannot be avoided and on which the three countries must take action. They are mainly linked to the fact that the European Parliament cannot and will not close its eyes to a whole series of issues related to the fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria supporting the protection of fundamental rights, media freedom and freedom of association, as well as the protection of minorities’ rights, good neighbourly relations, etc.
I would like to dwell briefly on three issues which, in my view, are of fundamental importance to making progress on the three countries’ accession. Firstly, it is clear with regard to Croatia that the path to membership is already open for this country. The agreement reached with Slovenia is extremely important, but we call for its ratification as soon as possible so that it will provide the opportunity for the negotiations with Croatia to be concluded by the end of this year.
With regard to Macedonia, we hope that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will demonstrate the necessary flexibility. We also hope that the new Greek Government will find a solution to the name issue so that Macedonia can receive a date for starting negotiations by this year.
As far as Turkey is concerned, the Cyprus question cannot be avoided. Until progress is made on this first, Turkey cannot hope to make substantial progress in its process of integration."@en1
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