Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-27-Speech-2-634-000"
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"en.20110927.31.2-634-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I wonder why Baroness Ashton is speaking from the Council bench. After all, the Eastern partnership is part of Community policy. Perhaps we should discuss this at a later stage.
There are a few comments I should like to make. I hope that the Warsaw Summit will be a substantive success and will also improve the climate of relations. I hope that, despite the different developments in the various countries – in particular Belarus, of course – it will prove possible to combine increased efforts in a multilateral approach and that the Member States of the Eastern partnership will come to recognise their mutual interests, making it easier to resolve the ‘frozen conflicts’ you referred to earlier – Nagorno-Karabakh, for example – because a commonality of interests has been established.
I believe that the Eastern partnership needs a much stronger structure in terms of this multilateral approach for economic and political reasons if progress is to be made on the economic front as well as in the political context. It is important for us to concentrate on increasing our cooperation with civil society and with the opposition parties in countries like Belarus and, until the European Endowment for Democracy is finally put in place, that we should use the already established European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights to ensure the implementation of the appropriate supports for democracy and human rights independently of the state apparatus.
Baroness Ashton and Mr Füle, please allow me to comment on today’s events. I have heard that the Ukrainian Attorney-General today called for a seven-year gaol sentence for Yulia Tymoshenko and a fine of USD 1.5 billion on the basis of an article of the Ukrainian Penal Code introduced in 1957 by Joseph Stalin and strengthened once again by a number of changes in 1962. It has also come to our attention that this situation applies not just to Ms Tymoshenko, but also to 15 or 16 representatives of the opposition.
I would be very interested to know how we are to respond and what we are to do if there is no explanation forthcoming in regard to this question by Friday, contrary to the impression gathered by Mr Füle, Mr Bildt and myself in our meeting with President Yanukovych. I believe that we need to make progress here. An association agreement, or a free trade zone as Ukraine sees it, is also in our interests. We want to seal the deal. However, it must be made clear that another country that seeks a European perspective must also observe a minimum number of rules in relation to democracy and the rule of law."@en1
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