Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-216"
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"en.20060315.20.3-216"2
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".
Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I would just like to make two brief observations on the subject of the Middle East. Firstly, we are right to demand that Hamas should face up to reality and renounce violence, but that must not be licence for Israel to continue with its policy of unilateral violence, which is what we have just seen it engaging in. Secondly, Europe, and the USA, must be consistent in their nuclear policies, particularly in view of the different ways in which India and Iran are being treated, and the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna must be given a larger role in a multilateral system of uranium enrichment and nuclear waste management. If we stick with these principles, we will make progress.
Turning to the Balkans, it strikes me that our actions are being guided by the principle that progress is to be defined as whatever is not regress. I have to say that my group and I are very embarrassed by the conduct of certain Member States, which are making themselves culpable for the way in which the business of making Europe fit for the accession of new Member States is being played off against the Balkan countries’ prospects of accession. Europe will not, however, be made any stronger by the Balkan countries being robbed of their prospects of accession or seeing them deferred to the distant future. The guiding principle must still be the vision of EU membership, for which this House – my group included – has so often voted unanimously. Perfectly understandable though it is that demand should be made for the EU to be made more capable of welcoming new members – I am thinking here of the constitution and of the financial basis – this cannot be used against the countries of South-Eastern Europe and as a means of fending off their efforts at accession. Preparations for this on our side and in the Balkans must run in parallel. The preparation of both sides must be consistent and thorough, and while it is in progress, practical action needs to be taken to prepare the countries of the Balkans for accession to the European Union, not least by making visa arrangements simpler and easier. Further to what you had to say about the ministers of the interior – Mrs Gottes and Mr Ohr – I hope that they will do something tangible in order to give this region’s young people, in particular, a chance to get to know Europe at last. Despite Slobodan Milošević’s death – which was in many respects premature – it remains in the interests of the victims and of Europe’s shared future that all those who committed crimes should be brought to The Hague for trial, and on that we must certainly insist.
The countries of the Balkans, which have so often in the course of our continent’s history been the playthings of the European Great Powers, must progressively be integrated into the European Union. We will not, in any case, accept their being relegated to an earlier stage of their relationship with it. When, tomorrow, we vote to adopt the Brok report, we must do so stating clearly only that which is in the text, and without the interpretations that have, regrettably, been placed upon it in the last few hours and have the effect of falsifying what it actually contains. We defend the Balkan countries’ prospects of membership of the European Union."@en1
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