Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-18-Speech-4-205"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000518.7.4-205"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"I would like to thank Mrs Buitenweg and Mr Howitt for the work that they have put into this, which has been both a personal as well as a political commitment. As others have said, this is an aspirational directive about the sort of Europe we want to create. It is directly relevant, for once, to the lives of many people living within the European Union. From my constituency of London where a large portion of the population come from minority ethnic groups and where there is a growing number of children of mixed-race relationships, this is an exceedingly important directive. It is even more important for those areas where people wrongly feel that there is no need for anti-racist or anti-discrimination legislation, because there are no visibly non-white people, but yet they will still vote for parties which espouse racist or anti-asylum seeker policies, because they are afraid of the unknown and the different.
I welcome the directive. I am pleased Council feels a sense of urgency about it. I assume this will be reflected in their willingness to take on board what Parliament is saying. We have to acknowledge that in this House we regularly call upon other countries and governments to recognise the rights of ethnic minorities and to practice policies of universal human rights. We have to demand the highest standards of ourselves.
It will not be easy to implement this directive and I am not referring to the votes. It requires us to call into question the workings of all our institutions, including longstanding well-respected ones, and our own practices. That will not be easy or painless. In the UK we are gradually admitting to the institutional racism we practice and starting to examine the core values of our institutions. That cannot be done unless the individuals within them examine their own beliefs and actions. That is why the amendments about training, monitoring and implementation are so important in this directive."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples