Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-16-Speech-4-006"
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"en.20040916.1.4-006"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in the European Parliament, too, ‘Women on Waves’ are having an impact. Why is this so?
Ever since the end of August, the Portuguese Government has been preventing the Dutch vessel
from entering a port on the west coast of Portugal. This Dutch vessel belongs to the ‘Women on Waves’ organisation, which Portuguese women’s organisations have invited to Portugal to give out information on abortion, contraception, and the RU 486 abortion pill, which is the least traumatic method of terminating pregnancy. The Portuguese Government evidently regards this as putting Portuguese women in grave danger, or else it would not have taken this drastic course of action. The Portuguese Government thought it was worth violating two of the European internal market’s fundamental freedoms: the right to information and the right to freedom of movement within the EU.
This is a serious political incident; never before has the right to freedom of movement been violated for purely political reasons. We in the Socialist Group cannot accept this, and so we are asking the Council and the Commission what they are proposing to do to prevent this unprecedented occurrence in the history of the European Union from being repeated. I see this as an important question and one that has to be put to the incoming Commission right now, and we want to see it made perfectly clear that this is not acceptable.
The incident has had repercussions right across Europe; it is all over the media, for there is of course more to it behind the scenes. The fact of the matter is that women in the European Union really are having their freedom curtailed, and we cannot accept the creeping rollback that is going on here. We see from the Treaties that, at the level of the nation state, the freedom of movement may be restricted only in the case of a danger to public safety, from terrorism for example, but is that what is at risk in this particular instance? Is women’s health threatened by an epidemic? If so, perhaps it is an epidemic of free thought or of the freedom to decide; I adopt this rather ironic tone in view of the very different views expressed even in the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, where the Christian Democrats wanted this case to have a lower profile. I do think, though, that it is a very important one, and one that needs to be dealt with here in the European Parliament.
We want all women in Europe to know how to get access, in the safest possible way, to contraceptives and terminations and to information about them and the safest ways to use them and then to be free to decide for themselves what they want. It is clear that this case, at the end of the day, not only has the most profound effect on individual women’s right to choose, but that it is also and at the same time a highly political act, and that is why we cannot accept the violation of two of the four basic freedoms. Although we want Mr Barroso to say where he stands on this, I would also ask Commissioner Wallström to add her weight to the women’s case. Mr Barroso is presenting eight women as Commissioners and claims to want to give women a better future, but it may be that the substance of his programme will suffer a setback. That is something we want to prevent, and that is why we are having this debate today. I hope that both the Commission and the Council will clearly state their positions on this. If they do not, then I think the
or the ‘Women on Waves’ organisation ought to write a thank-you letter to the Portuguese Government for giving us the opportunity to discuss the principle whereby women must be able to decide freely when and how they want to receive information on the termination of pregnancy and what they do with it, and, at the end of the day, also have a free choice as to when and how they want to have a child. This is a fundamental issue, and it needs to be discussed in this House."@en1
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