Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-12-Speech-2-145"
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"en.20020312.7.2-145"2
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"Mr President, I have to say that I am genuinely perplexed – and I am not saying this to take sides – by this report, not least in the light of my experience of the past two years in which, as Vice-President of the ACP-EEC Joint Assembly responsible for Human Rights, much of my time was spent promoting women’s rights and freedoms. I am perplexed by many parts of the report and I want to go back to the crux of the matter, which I feel has been comprehensively defined by Mrs Bonino in her speech, and state my views clearly once again.
The problem is the separation of religion from politics. From this point of view, if there is to be such a separation, it has to be understood that there are two ways of looking at these two radically different dimensions of life; so much so that, in actual fact, the only fundamentalism I truly fear is the fundamentalism of those sorts of idealisms which can no longer see the sense of reality in dealing with each specific subject individually by different means. Therefore, when this report calls upon us not to recognise States in which women are excluded from government and it is referring not to a normal State but to a State such as the Vatican, for example, I realise immediately that there is something wrong, for we are being asked to trespass on Member States’ prerogatives and interfere in something which does not deserve such treatment.
Similarly, if religion and politics are to be separated, the problem is the freedom of the Church, which must not be conditioned by political points of view or prerogatives. Therefore, when I read in point K of this report that, when religious bodies carry out activities of a public nature, they are, just by doing so, as good as committing a crime against an alleged European law; that is, if, by way of example, a religious body were to run a hospital or a school, it would in some way be a threat to European law, I find this extremely disturbing.
That is why I confirm once again my support for the fight to uphold women’s rights, but I must strongly reiterate my concern at the report’s method and subject matter."@en1
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