Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-15-Speech-3-288"
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"en.20041215.10.3-288"2
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"Campaign 1 is entitled 'Promotion, justice and dignity'. This targets criminal justice, supports universal abolition of the death penalty, and supports the work of international mechanisms which monitor and report on respect for human rights and related international treaty obligations.
Campaign 2, which is especially dear to me, is entitled 'Fostering a culture of human rights': human rights education, training, monitoring and awareness-raising by targeting advancement of rights of marginalised or vulnerable groups – that means the rights of women and children – including female genital mutilation, trafficking of women, human rights defenders; torture prevention and rehabilitation of torture victims, programmes of higher education and training for professionals, support for human rights dialogues. So, on the whole, it is a very important campaign.
Campaign 3 is entitled 'Promoting democratic process'. This is essential for all these societies, especially for the Middle East or the broader Middle East, which I will come to later. So there is a lot of development of participatory democracy, fostering informed pluralistic discourse with civil society, targeting freedom of association, freedom of expression, independent press, broadcasting, unimpeded access to the Internet, and election observation missions.
Campaign 4 is entitled 'Advancing equality, tolerance and peace', embraces the issues of racial discrimination, xenophobia, rights of minorities, indigenous peoples.
Then there is the selection of regions and countries and matching them with each of the four campaigns. All that is foreseen for 2007, and in the next financial perspective there will be only six finance regulations, four of which are very important ones: enlargement, development, good neighbourhood policy and stability. In all of them, democracy and human rights are in the mainstream, which is a real achievement on the basis of which we can work. There is thematic programming here.
Returning to Belarus, which we spoke about in the Council recently, I explained that I wanted to work specifically with the NGOs. We then received an invitation from Lithuania to hold a workshop there. So we will have three phases: firstly, two phases in the Commission, and then we will confer with Parliament. Then there is also an invitation from Lithuania, because Lithuania, Poland and many of these countries know where we have to start with NGOs. You are right: we can only work with civil society there, because we cannot work with governments at this stage.
On the broader Middle East, I was very interested in this new possibility for cooperation. It is true that we have been working for ten years with the countries of the Middle East, the southern basin of the Mediterranean. The United States is now doing something similar. It is a good initiative, because the more we can work in parallel and thus bring more democracy and easier access to democracy to the region, the better.
I now turn to some other more formal questions. According to the information I have, for reasons of juridical coherence, the Council has now reintroduced the amendments tabled by Parliament when Regulations (EC) Nos 975/1999 and 976/1999 were at the drafting stage. I hope this information is welcome to the Members who raised this.
In order to work better with NGOs it was essential to have deconcentration, as we call it. That means that we have given a lot of responsibility to the delegations, that are also in a much better position to conduct a survey on what NGOs are doing. This is also why we will follow developments much better. I hope that there will be better control because I know that while, on the one hand, we should have a speedy means of action, on the other hand we also have to be very careful and to control things properly. This is what I wanted to say. Indeed, it is an offer of dialogue on my part. I thank you for taking it. We are not perfect, but there is a positive offer and I hope that Parliament will take it in this positive spirit to work together for the major values of our European Union – that is, human rights."@en1
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