Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-14-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20060214.4.2-023"2
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"Mr President, the democratic principle in the Union's foreign relations, which we are debating today in the wake of the report by Mr Agnoletto, whom I congratulate, raises a series of crucial questions. I shall confine myself, for reasons of time, to five of them.
First question: will the Union continue to confine itself to the more or less declaratory character of the human rights and democracy clause or will it try – and this is my proposal – to raise the democracy principle to an appropriate legal means, into a
for the smooth functioning of agreements with third countries?
Second question: are the selective discounts of the democracy clause permissible? Is the differentiated intensity in the formulation of the principle in question permissible? The answer is obvious. The credibility of the invocation of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms must obey the rule of uniform standards.
Third question: do the elements of electoral competition and free elections alone suffice in order to characterise a system as democratic? Modern democratic life makes demands intertwined with the quality of democracy. It makes the demand of participatory civil rights, of horizontal political accountability. It makes the demand of honest governance, of institutional security and of social cohesion.
Fourth question: does the Union intend – do we the democratically legitimised Chamber
intend – to adopt qualitative indicators for measuring and evaluating the democratic conduct of our private economic and commercial partners and, more importantly, of third European countries which are being called on, or will be called on, to satisfy the so-called Copenhagen criteria?
Fifth and last question: in European external relations, the democratic principle and the market economy are cited along side each other or in the same breath, but in practice the market economy claims priority. If nothing else, are we going to restore this balance?"@en1
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