Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-236"
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"en.20060315.21.3-236"2
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".
Mr President, in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, my group has voted in favour of the Brok report for two reasons. We think that the concept of absorption capacity should be better defined. It is a trendy, all-purpose concept on which everyone can hang whatever they like, and that means that the question of geographical borders will need to be answered, for we can no longer dodge that question.
We share the view that it is necessary that the EU will think about an intermediate step between full membership and neighbourhood, for the sake of those countries that have no membership perspective as yet. I am not, therefore, talking about Turkey or the western Balkans, but rather about Ukraine, Moldova or Belarus. I have to say that my group and I were deeply disappointed, and extremely vexed frankly, to see that in the run-up to this debate, the media twisted the words in the report, the result running counter to a number of central points.
If we read the media ahead of this debate, the ultimate conclusion is that an intermediate step should be created for countries including Turkey and the western Balkans. It is no coincidence – for let us be quite honest about this – that this happens to be the view held by the rapporteur, and one that he never had any intention of concealing. Mr Brok has always been opposed to opening negotiations with Turkey and has, since the rejection of the constitution, increasingly grown sceptical about the membership perspective of the western Balkans. The rapporteur is fully entitled to his view, but that is not the view of the majority of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. What is more, it is not what his own report states either.
It would become the rapporteur to spell out, outside of this Chamber, what is in his report, and does not mistake its contents for notions of his own. What Parliament states in this report is that we do not want to tamper with the membership perspective of Turkey and the western Balkans and that intermediate steps would only be an option for those countries if they themselves were to decide in favour of it. Everyone knows just as well as I do that all those western Balkan countries and Turkey do not want to go down that route; they want full membership. Let us stop creating ambiguity in this Chamber, but, above all, also outside of it."@en1
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