Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-01-Speech-3-204-000"
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"en.20120201.15.3-204-000"2
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".
Mr President, I was positively surprised by an article written by none other than Prime Minister Putin telling the world via the
how he intends to modernise Russia, the state and the economy.
In the article, Mr Putin states that today’s Russia is dominated by the state, that it suffers from serious corruption and that everything needs to change. That is good news for the citizens of Russia, as well as for us. Would it not be great indeed if it were possible to break through a failing culture and turn the country into a true democracy?
Yet, Mr President, what also struck me was that there was no mention in the article of people in Russian society. While there is a recognition that the market needs to be given new freedoms in order to generate new confidence, there is a complete and utter lack of any consideration of freedoms for people. A society where people are subordinated to the market, where people as individuals or collectively are denied fundamental rights and fundamental freedoms, will not function, despite all the fine words.
If Russia wants to be modern and prosperous there needs to be real work done there, twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, in order to properly tackle all the deficiencies in respect of freedom and there needs to be a real effort to get going in respect of working towards a true democracy. Mr President, we have seen – and Baroness Ashton has just said – that in the past the democratic rights of citizens were trampled on. We saw this with the
elections. We hope and expect that things will be different in the presidential elections, but the signs are not good.
What applies when it comes to human rights in Russia also applies to Russian influence beyond its borders. If the Russian regime is to be believed, it will refrain from using its veto irresponsibly and it will thus not protect the Syrian regime, nor actively support it with weapons to be used on people who are simply seeking their freedom. Mr President, we can now find out whether these were merely words, or also translated into deeds."@en1
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