Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-16-Speech-2-014"
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"en.20070116.2.2-014"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am, today, putting myself forward for the position of President of the European Parliament, and I am doing this in order to join with you in serving the citizens of the European Union, the law and solidarity between our peoples.
I would like to extend warm thanks to the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats and to its chairman Mr Daul, to the Socialist Group in the European Parliament and its chairman Mr Schulz for their support, and also express my gratitude for the support given by the Liberals and Democrats under their chairman Mr Watson, the Group for a Europe of the Nations and their chairman Mr Crowley and for the support I have received from other Members.
I would like to say how much I respect those other group chairmen who are applying for this position. Together with you, Members of this House, I wish to work for the unification of our European continent with the same dedication as I have shown since 1979. I promise you that I will be a fair and objective President of this House, and I ask you to put your trust in me.
I am doing this on the basis of having served here in this House ever since the first direct elections in 1979, when I started out as my group’s coordinator in the Committee on Regional Development, where I became familiar with the problems of the structurally weak areas throughout Europe. I spent ten years chairing the Security and Disarmament Sub-Committee at a time when our embarking on this work was regarded with some amusement. I have particular recollections of working together extremely well with our former President Klaus Hänsch.
As deputy chairman of our group – something in which I take particular pride – I was responsible, on behalf of my party and our political family, for the Treaty of Amsterdam, which represented a breakthrough in terms of this House’s legislative role. I then took on responsibility for enlargement issues. All those who witnessed what happened know that I, from the very outset, dedicated myself to ensuring that all the countries of Central Europe that are now Member States of the European Union were given equal treatment in the negotiations. I rejoice that the countries of Central Europe are now part of our community of values in the European Union.
As chairman of my group, I subjected the Treaty of Nice to critical scrutiny here in this Chamber. Back in December 2000, I said this: ‘What we need is a further reform. We need a major convention to consider the future of Europe’. I am glad that this view was supported by our group and then by almost everyone in this House.
Building on this foundation, there are a number of things I would like to achieve together with you. Europe must become a citizens’ Europe. People need to be won over to the great project that is ours – our continent united whilst maintaining the identities of our peoples – and this is a task for all of us to perform by doing our work in a convincing way. There is a need for further improvement in cooperation with the national parliaments, but not only at the national level, for Europe is founded also on our regions, our cities and our communities, and in those, too, there is a need for cooperation in good faith. Rather than being opponents, they and we are working together towards a common goal, the unity of our continent.
I would like to apply some determination to helping us make the substance of the constitutional treaty a reality. This European Union of ours has 500 million people, and it needs reforms. We will have to fight – peacefully – to make those reforms happen, and to that I would add that this Europe of ours has a chance of a future only if we affirm our values; that is why the values on which we agreed in Part II of the Constitution matter, and, together, we must put them into practice.
Finally, what I would like to do is to join with you in making my contribution to the dialogue of cultures, particularly with the Arab and Islamic world. Over the past five or six years I have visited sixteen Arab countries. We need to cooperate better with them. We want partnership and – if at all possible – friendship with the Arab and Muslim world on the basis of our convictions. Whilst respecting the convictions of others, we must walk into the future in a peaceful manner.
I shall always be what I have been in the past – an advocate of human rights. We have always taken a critical line on Chechnya and the massacres there, and I speak as a friend of the United States when I say that Guantánamo is incompatible with our European legal order."@en1
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