Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-27-Speech-5-021"
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"en.20001027.1.5-021"2
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"Mr President, a Czech bishop, Bishop Koukl, to whom I am very close, has a rather nice saying: “Loving thy neighbour would be so simple if only one’s neighbour were not right on one’s doorstep”. This saying aptly describes relations between numerous neighbouring countries. Historically, it is neighbours that seem to have so much trouble with each other and the idea of the European Union is to resolve problematic relations with neighbours. I should like here to take my hat off to Spanish foreign policy. Spain has done a magnificent job in turning round the difficult neighbourly relations which Europe and North Africa and Spain and Morocco have suffered during the course of history.
I had the honour of attending the twentieth jubilee of former King Hassan of Morocco at the beginning of the 1980s, while I was working as a journalist. I watched from the front row, as it were. It was an impressive sight when the Spanish king came to Marrakech and drove with the Moroccan king in an open car through streets lined with over a million people. It reminded me of scenes from our history and from my childhood, when Konrad Adenauer and Charles De Gaulle drove through German towns in exactly the same way, demonstrating that the problems between the two neighbours had been overcome and that France and Germany would together form the core of European integration.
Spain and Morocco have a similar opportunity to become the core of integration in the Mediterranean. I think that Spain and Morocco have done a great deal in order to avoid what many see as unavoidable, namely the clash of civilisations, the conflict when different cultures collide. Spain has developed a marvellous bridging function here, as has Portugal, and I think that we should look at this fisheries agreement in this light. The Spanish and Portuguese fishermen deserve our undivided support. This is not a local phenomenon; these are European fishermen and even though we are not perhaps directly affected, we must fight their corner.
In doing so, however, we must not lose sight of the fact that relations between the European Union and the transit countries around our borders, and I am thinking in particular here of North Africa, Turkey and Russia, which act as bridges on the borders of the European Union to other parts of the world and to other countries – that these countries deserve our particular support. That is why we need to forge close economic and political relations with Morocco as quickly as possible, while at the same time defending our European fisheries interests. That is why I am in favour of everything that has been said here about forcing the agreement. However, I should like expressly to criticise the anti-Moroccan undertones that have also been heard in this debate because they do nothing to help neighbourly relations and because they do nothing to help the fisheries agreement. We must be critical and open, but we must say to the Moroccans that we are keen to forge a close and permanent partnership with Morocco and to stabilise Morocco's position in the Mediterranean, while at the same time safeguarding our own interests.
I think that if we manage to persuade Morocco to take a European outlook, then Morocco will do what it should have done long ago, i.e. it will discuss the question of natural resources, of common resources with us and will stop giving preference to ships from third countries."@en1
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