Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-14-Speech-2-014"
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"en.20041214.5.2-014"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am glad to see Mr Barroso again this morning. Mr Barroso, I have not had the opportunity of speaking to you for a month, have positively longed to see you, and it is good that you are here to listen for ideas to take away with you. I am also glad to see Mrs Kroes sitting behind you; I will readily admit that it gave me pleasure to see that the first thing she has done, after all that has happened here, is to submit one of the decisions taken by Portugal’s Government under Mr Barroso to critical scrutiny – a good indication of her independence.
My third point, Mr Barroso, is another message for you as you prepare your programme; it has to do with Europe’s putting down roots and establishing its place in the world. A model of democracy founded upon multinationality and multi-ethnic structures, which is what the European Union is, can be a winner when it comes to exporting peace to the world, because balance and acceptance are at the heart of the European Union – the balance between large and small and the acceptance of minorities in particular. If you base Europe’s international policy on this message that we seek internal balance – as we are at the moment helping to do in Ukraine – and that we seek political rather than military solutions to ethnic conflicts, then you will always have the Socialist Group on your side.
Mr Poettering’s references to Nikita Khrushchev are getting more frequent. The reason for this, which I can divulge to the House, is that Mr Poettering’s doctorate was on Konrad Adenauer’s security policy. Like much else in his politics, Adenauer’s security policy was guided by the motto of ‘no experiments’. I can tell Mr Poettering that ‘no experiments’ will not get the European Union very far. So let me encourage you, Mr Barroso, to be cautious only in the words you use, but bold in what your Commission proposes and in the initiatives it takes.
I want now to seize the opportunity to give you, from the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, three essential messages to take away with you; in previous debates, I have described them as the three key elements in our policy in this House. Before I repeat them, let me give you – for you are here to listen – some more good advice, which is that whatever initiatives you take will need broad majority support in this House. I therefore take it as read that you will take what the Socialist Group says on board and that it will also be reflected in the initiatives you put forward. You will of course understand that any programme from the Commission that is flawlessly constructed and draws on neo-liberalism or conservative thinking while devoid of any social democratic elements will not get any support from us. Let that be quite clear.
If we want economic policy in the European Union to be guided – as Mr Poettering put it – by economic reforms, then, just so we can make it clear where the faultlines are that divide consensus from conflict, I can tell you – Mr Poettering, Mr Barroso – that such economic reforms, always and above all, add up to one thing. They must, indeed, help to make the European Union more competitive, but they must also, and above all, help to promote social cohesion in Europe. The two are different sides of the same coin. Those who believe that competitiveness demands that Europe’s workers should have fewer rights will have energetic resistance from our Group to contend with. To take an example, the Services Directive will give you an early opportunity to show us whether this Commission is willing to bring the two together. Competitiveness must be emphasised as much as possible, but social cohesion is absolutely indispensable as the basis for everything we do.
Mr Poettering’s second point, in which he mentioned anti-terrorism in the same breath as asylum and immigration, struck me as combining two quite different phenomena in a dangerous way. Combating terrorism is one of the European Union’s core tasks, but please do not lump it together with illegal immigration and asylum policy. I am sure you do not in fact intend to do so, but please make the distinction! Counter-terrorism has little to do with asylum and immigration, but asylum and immigration form one single task, one of European policy’s pressing concerns.
For that reason, Mr Barroso, I believe that the good proposals that have already been made – years ago, by Commissioner Vitorino as part of the Tampere process – should again feature in your programme. The Europe we expect – and this is what our group is striving for – is both humane and concerned to guard its citizens’ security, one whose external borders are secured as consistently as possible, but which also treats humanely those who need our protection.
We talk about a clean environment and need a sustainable policy for it, but we also have to set out in plain terms what has again become apparent in Buenos Aires over the past week, that the failure of a sustainable worldwide policy for the environment is not the European Union’s doing. One of the Commission’s core tasks must be to spell out the fact that, for as long as the United States of America fails to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, for as long as it does nothing to help reduce the production of CO2, we Europeans must be tireless in demanding that it should do so. That is one of your core tasks as President of the Commission."@en1
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