Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-11-20-Speech-2-163-000"
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"en.20121120.27.2-163-000"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I acknowledge the honour you do my country in welcoming me here to the prestigious Strasbourg Parliament. I would like to thank you.
True, Haiti still needs aid. However, first and foremost, Haitians need productive work, trade and direct investment.
Haiti is at the gates of the Americas: North America, which is starting to grow again, and South America, which has not returned to crisis this time and has never stopped growing.
Haiti is a strategic platform, a hub, investment friendly, a jump-off point enabling European undertakings to participate in reconstructing the country and gain a strategic outpost for the region.
Haiti needs ports, airports, roads, power stations and hotels. Haiti has fertile soil and is easily able to start feeding its citizens again and exporting its surpluses.
Haiti’s climate and geography are unequalled, with thousands of miles of white sandy beaches and nature still largely virgin and unexplored.
From Fort Liberté, to Cayes, from Gonaïves to Miragoâne, our country has abundant naturally protected deep-water harbours.
Our citizens are young, courageous, welcoming and hardworking. I am here today to present this country to you, to invite and encourage you to take advantage of the best of the country and its extraordinary investment opportunities.
I invite you to work with us to help us regain our financial sovereignty by making it possible for us to return to the international financial markets.
I am here to consider, with you, other potential free trade agreements.
I encourage you to work with us to design and develop smart, profitable projects. I ask you to collaborate with us so that, together, we find the best ways of financing them.
Ladies and gentlemen, I come bearing our credo, the same one you had in adversity; the one that gave you three decades of prosperity; the one that got you back on your feet after the Second World War; the one that brought down the Berlin Wall; the one that motivated the greatly respected Paul-Henri Spaak.
Many of your retired teachers dream only of helping to make our world a fairer and more equitable place. Send them to us and share in training our young people and their teachers.
Join us in changing history: history that reminds us of our links with Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Poland; more recent history that recalls the trade links we had, until 1940, with Germany; history that will record what the European Union is doing now in the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, in terms of development cooperation efforts.
Europe can be proud of its place in the world: its charisma, its convictions, the schools of thought it carries, the answers it brings to the planet’s problems, its initiatives and its role in emerging countries.
European young people must know that the countries of the South are counting on them, that they cannot shut themselves off and that their generosity and intelligent choices will lead to a world which is more based on comradeship, more economically moral, more environmentally secure, and certainly more democratic and more tolerant.
Haiti today, made strong by this friendship, is taking action, sweeping away all of the old clichés attached to it, breaking the chains of endemic underdevelopment, exorcising its old demons, combating the desertification that threatens it and seeking to open up to the world.
For a year and a half now, my administration has been working hard on this. There have been a few hiccups from time to time but nobody will deny our good faith.
Again this year Haiti was hit, with varying intensity, by tropical storms Isaac and Sandy, which tested us. Once again, it was human lives, harvests, homes and livestock that suffered and once again, the international community was quick to come to our aid, to rescue and to rebuild.
One day this vicious circle must be broken and a virtuous circle constructed. That is what we are doing; it is by making this effort that Haiti will get back on its feet. Haiti will get back on its feet because we have understood that the vulnerability of Haitian land, already considerable, will increase in the coming years in pace with the progress of climate change predicted for the Caribbean.
It will get back on its feet because, stubbornly, we are working to get to grips with another timescale, that of prevention, which, in this area, means land use planning.
Land use planning means making the country less vulnerable, protecting watersheds so that they stop causing destruction as a result of deforestation, erosion or anarchic urbanisation. Land use planning also means not losing millions of dollars every time there is a major weather event and creating an acceptable living environment for the Haitian people.
I came here to tell you that, come hell or high water, and despite its bruises, Haiti has not lowered its guard. Slowly but surely, Haiti is standing up again, and that is the good news I come to share with you.
My government has instruments to start making land use planning a reality. These instruments are CNIGS (National Centre for Geo-spatial Information), supported by you, the European Union, and CIAT (Inter-ministerial Committee on Land Use Planning), to which you contribute. I would like to thank you.
I want you to know that my administration will make thorough use of these to frame its action over time and to make an impact in the Haitian context.
You see, in this area, Europe, the ‘old continent’ is ahead of not a few other partners. As we say in Haiti: Europe ‘
’, or ‘Europe is at the forefront’.
Europe continues to inspire a rapidly changing world, where, increasingly, the idea of States going it alone must give way to regionalisation, creating a space for free movement of goods and persons, multiple states speaking with a single voice and supporting each other while retaining their identity.
The Caribbean region, involving all of the Caribbean islands, large and small, with no exceptions, may one day emerge as a genuine union of independent States and take full advantage of its extraordinary geostrategic position.
It is not just the price to be paid for stability – I was going to say for peace in the world – but much more: these are the new development incentives in a context where all those involved undertake to maintain peace, lawfulness and justice.
The European Union makes its contribution here, in the context of its support for the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, and the funds allocated under the European Development Fund to regional integration are becoming more substantial and playing a part in this initiative.
Today’s Haiti supports that, conscious of its position, its weight and its role in the region, but also of its shortcomings. We have clear-sightedly evaluated where we lag behind and have decided to stop engaging in self-flagellation but rather to work to rectify the shortcomings. We are doing so, a little more each day. It will not be a sprint but a marathon.
Here, too, Europe inspires us since, while some of its Member States were on their knees scarcely half a century ago, they are now, despite the financial crisis, again on solid foundations that will enable them to get back on their feet one day.
Europe getting back on its feet rests, among other things, on the transparent management and rational use of public resources, the unequivocal functioning of justice, the level of education of its peoples and their desire to work unceasingly to rebuild their respective economies.
While we owe this change of tack to the courage of our people and the determination of our government, we certainly also include the active cooperation on the part of Europe, the most important cooperation of all. I would like to thank you. I see in it the signs of a friendship forged by history, a friendship that certainly cannot leave us indifferent to the financial crisis which, in threatening you, also affects us.
Success knows no borders. My term of office is dedicated, among other things, to schooling our population, fighting corruption and establishing the rule of law, and I anticipate that the results will come.
Already, in less than two years, more than a million children, hitherto left out of the equation, have been brought free of charge into the education system, with no help other than from the public purse.
Already the effort to get back on our feet has also resulted in more than a million homeless people being re-housed, justifying another effort made by your taxpayers.
I want to express my great gratitude to them and assure them that their solidarity has not been plundered and that the most vulnerable have been its true beneficiaries.
Already our hoped-for rule of law is taking shape: the vacancies in our institutions have been filled; the amended Constitution, despite its weaknesses, has been promulgated; the judiciary has found its feet; the Superior Council of the Judiciary is operating; the Permanent Electoral Council is being assembled; elections to renew a third of the Senate are on the way; civil liberties are in place and the press expresses itself freely, the opposition even more so; corruption is losing ground and there is now no refuge for organised crime.
Slowly but surely justice is becoming more just!
On human rights, I am actively working towards ratification, during my term of office, of agreements and conventions to remove the statute of limitations for certain crimes.
Just as, in the same vein, during my term of office and with your cooperation, the right to health, work, equal opportunities, gender equality and protection of minors will become a reality.
The initial signs are there!
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, economic Europe was what came first; the founding fathers of the EEC understood that, the ACP countries must understand it too. Haiti, above all!
I remain convinced that a united, and thus even stronger, Europe will be able to find the right solutions to re-launch its economy.
Your cooperation pushes in that direction by supporting major infrastructure works in our country. National Road No 3, a large section of which was recently opened in the presence of Commissioner Piebalgs, is a telling sign. The road will enable, indeed already allows, the local economies of this region to become more dynamic, and they are grateful to you.
Plants for processing raw materials at the borders with our neighbours, border customs points and access routes to the bi-national markets also point in the direction of economic development first of all.
That is why, from the very start of my term of office, I have been preaching these models and others besides: those often drawn from the wells of your wisdom, your ideals, your old civilisation; those which emanate from Strasbourg, now closely associated with the democratic ideals of your Parliament; those on the basis of which you support us; those in the name of which you have so warmly welcomed me here today.
Thank you.
I remain convinced that no recession lasts forever. The length of a crisis depends on the speed and wisdom of the recovery measures.
From Mario Draghi to Christine Lagarde, to mention but those two, you have access to some of the best brains on the planet, which will enable you to arrest this crisis and put it right.
However, my presence here serves first of all to thank you for your generosity and solidarity and to recall that no country can recover from poverty by simple handouts and charity."@en1
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