Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-17-Speech-3-013"
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"en.20041117.3.3-013"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to confine my remarks to two aspects of the Council's presentation: Lisbon and the Hague Programme.
Firstly, on a personal basis I always worry when I hear a politician use the phrase 'there is no alternative', because Mrs Thatcher used that phrase when we were all perfectly well aware that there were plenty of alternatives. I worry, therefore, that we only look on the Lisbon Agenda as some sort of Holy Grail that we have to pursue, and genuinely welcome the Netherlands presidency's recognition of the breadth of that Agenda.
All too often in this House the Lisbon Agenda is limited to the issue of competitiveness, and we omit all the other facets concerning more and better quality jobs, social cohesion and sustainable development, which went on to be developed more fully at Gothenburg. If we reduce the Lisbon Agenda to the sphere of competition we are selling ourselves short and will not solve many of the problems facing our societies. The relevance of a partial reading of the agenda is thus highly questionable, and it is partly because of that partial reading that we have had such problems in implementing much of the agenda.
We have totally forgotten the Cardiff Process on integration of the environment into all the processes and policies of the European Union. When one looks at social cohesion issues, which are linked to some of the other topics touched on today, we would also seem to have forgotten the dynamic approach needed in the implementation of the Article 13 directives on anti-discrimination. We would do well to reconsider the role of the Equal Programme in future, rather than consigning it to the dustbin. The implementation of legislation on anti-discrimination deals with issues surrounding the marginalisation of many in our societies, and also deals with some of the issues people have talked about this morning, in terms of respect for individuals and for what they can offer.
When looking at the Hague Programme itself, one of the things not to have come through strongly enough is political leadership on issues concerning anti-discrimination. A directive on anti-racism and xenophobia is still stuck in Council and we are not giving the political leadership that the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has identified as being necessary to move forward. I wonder whether the EU Human Rights Agency will provide that.
We obviously welcome the moves towards qualified majority voting and codecision, and assume that this will also bring the European Court of Justice into play, although this is something not yet made explicit. However, I regret that legal migration has not been included because, as the Council conclusions state, and as we have again heard this morning, illegal migration cannot be separated from legal migration. This is not just a home affairs issue. It also has real resonance for employment policy. People prefer to have a legal status, and we need to look at the bureaucratic complexities which stand in the way of this, and which Parliament clearly identified in the previous legislature.
Rather than simply dwelling on the negatives – of which we have heard many this morning – we are looking for greater political leadership in terms of the sort of Europe we want to create."@en1
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