Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-01-Speech-3-044"
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"en.20041201.10.3-044"2
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"Mr President, on
Friday, in an interview on Russian television, Mr Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Vladimir Putin's man in charge of relations with the European Union, accused the new Members of the European Parliament and their Member States of interfering in Ukraine, adding that 20 years ago Solidarność was a creation of the West and that now the Poles were doing the same in Kiev.
Leaving aside this repetition of Soviet rhetoric about Solidarność, he does have an important point, which I would like to make here again today. The new Members feel acutely, both negatively and positively, the course of events in Ukraine today. Just as the founding Members of the EU recall the experiences that led to the establishment of the Union, so too we recall what was done to us and why for so many decades we could not join the Union.
We recall the sham elections in the three Baltic countries in 1940, when for instance, like Mr Putin's congratulatory call to Mr Yanukovich even before the announcement of preliminary results, Latvia's sham election results were accidentally published the day before they took place. We recall only too well the rigged elections after the war in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We have seen this before and we know what comes of it. But we have seen the other side as well, how tens and hundreds of thousands of people come together peacefully to state their solidarity with democracy.
We saw this with Solidarność in Gdansk and Warsaw and with Charter 77 in Prague; we saw it in the streets of Berlin and we saw it in the singing revolutions of the Baltic countries. In other words we know what is going on, we have seen it before. The 75 million people who became EU citizens this March are experiencing 'déja vu'. Our understanding of these events, our empirical knowledge, must not be dismissed by those who lack the knowledge or understanding of what this means.
Mr Yastrzhembsky, but I fear also some in the West, would paint the new Members' direct experience and knowledge as something that gets in the way of relations with Russia or that threatens illusions about what is going on in Ukraine.
We recall those in the West who said we should be careful with Solidarność, it might upset Brezhnev. We recall Western politicians who said the Baltic countries should not seek independence lest it threaten Mikhail Gorbachev.
I am not here to take sides in a political contest between candidates and parties in Ukraine, but I do take a stand against manipulation of elections.
We cannot say no to the Ukrainians because we are afraid of losing investments or markets in Russia. Democrats always try to find the Aristotelian golden mean, even in politics, but there is no middle ground between the truth and a lie, between democracy and its all too many opponents."@en1
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"Ilves (PSE )."1
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