Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-06-Speech-4-394"
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"en.20000706.15.4-394"2
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"Mr President, many of us in the Group of Greens and the European Free Alliance have our roots in the NGO and activist movement, so it is very dear to our hearts. Earlier today we discussed the annual report of the Committee on Petitions, that is the complaints end of the process of evaluating what is going on within the European Union.
The NGOs in our view act as part of the preventive process. They provide a scrutiny mechanism, they provide a way of making sure that we do not lose aspects of the legislation that we are doing. They make us think of new things and they are essential to our process. They are one of the few organisations which are really active on the citizens' behalf and if we are trying to create confidence within the structures we are trying to build, their role is absolutely essential. It is really important that they are there to counterbalance a lot of the business interests which do not seem to have financial difficulties in finding a path to our door, whereas for a lot of NGOs working internationally is enormously expensive.
The work we have been doing in various committees over the last few weeks on Article 13, the anti-discrimination article, would have been impossible without the input of those bodies. So the need to sort out a clear legal basis for their participation, and hence their funding, is absolutely essential, because this body cannot work properly without them.
Reference was made to the applicant countries, and I would echo the words of my colleague, Mr Pronk, that the NGO and civil society movement in those countries is going to be essential if we are going to have a European Union based on values of justice and democracy.
I would urge that we find a way of establishing a serious and reliable funding mechanism for those organisations that represent the poor, the excluded and the discriminated against at least, so that they are not scrabbling for funds every year, wondering if they are going to survive so they can do the job they exist to do."@en1
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