Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-01-14-Speech-3-021"
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"en.20090114.3.3-021"2
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"Thank you for all your questions and comments on my speech. In the Czech Republic, too, we have a parliament where we are used to a plurality of views, so some of the views came as no surprise to me, although I could not fully agree with them. However, I would like to repeat at the outset – and I say this in reply to a whole range of questions – that I feel my role here to be that of President of the European Council, and during these six months I do not intend to push my personal or party-political views; but I feel I must respond on one issue, because it concerns me personally, and that is the very harsh assessments of the Czech president Václav Klaus, a president who has made a name for himself with European citizens, which I think is a good thing, and I am proud of it. Václav Klaus is the icon of the Czech transformation in the 1990s, and it is, I might add, thanks to him that we are successful today and that we have emerged safely from those first ten years. I am proud of the fact that we came safely through the Velvet Revolution, proud of the fact that we drove the Russian troops out of our country in 1991, that we joined NATO in 1999, joined the European Union in 2004, and that last year we eliminated the barriers between EU countries and can now travel from Lisbon to Vilnius without passports or any restrictions. I am proud to have been part of that, and to be standing here today, and it seems incredible to me that the Czech Republic now holds the presidency of a community which has a population of nearly half a billion and comprises as many as 27 countries. If the European Union loses the capability – leaving aside the question of rules and unification – for free public discussion, and seeks to unify this discussion too, then it will not be my European Union. If we lose the capability, the possibility of freely expressing our views, it is the road to disaster, and I strongly object to the attacks on Václav Klaus. He has a unique ability to insert his views into this unified and, I would say, over-correct discussion, and thereby set the parameters for fresh discussion. Free discussion should be a matter of pride for the European Union in future, and should never be stifled.
As for the Treaty of Lisbon – which deserves a mention – I would say it is essentially a ‘middling’ treaty. A little worse than the Treaty of Nice and a little better than the one that followed. That happens to be my personal view of it. I negotiated this treaty on behalf of the Czech Republic; we approved this treaty in parliament, I signed this treaty and I shall vote for it in parliament – but once again the idea that we should dictate in advance to individual Member States that they have to ratify a document, that they do not have a national right to follow their own procedure and decide for themselves whether to accept it, seems to me absurd. We need to change the institutions, we need to improve the functioning of the European mechanisms, we need to simplify the rules; whether all this is in the Treaty of Lisbon, I am not entirely sure. Each of us had a slightly different view of how it should look, and for me, Mrs Bobošíková, it is a compromise, perhaps a very complex compromise, and I shall support its ratification.
At least a few words should be said about the situation in the Middle East and Europe’s position on that conflict. For a long time the European Union has been seen as ‘a very big payer but not a player’. This means it has made a big contribution to investments, including humanitarian and development investments in that region, but has not pulled its weight within the ‘quartet’, and has not shown the responsibility which participation in the quartet entails. I think the existing situation, with the arrival of the new American administration, gives the European Union an opportunity to invest not only money in that region, but also its problem-solving initiatives and a higher level of activity. I do not wish to be the judge of one side or the other, because the fact is that the Israelis have a right to live safely without rocket attacks, and I have been in Sderot and Ashkelon and other parts of Israel. Likewise, the people of Palestine have the right, at this moment, to create their own state and a functioning administration, and to live a safe and decent life. This 60-year conflict has solved nothing. I have no illusions that we will solve it now; our short-term aim is to achieve a truce and a cessation of hostilities. I would like to assess not only the role of the European negotiators, and the mission led by Karel Schwarzenberg which has departed for the region, but also, of course, the role of the Arab states in the region, which has been positive. This can be said of Egypt’s role or, for example, the role of Turkey and other countries. I think that after certain conditions have been met, such as a clampdown on arms smuggling from Sinai to Gaza, we could jointly achieve a situation – within the global security architecture, or through the European Union alone or only a part of that global architecture – where conflict could be ended, although I am not convinced that it would happen quickly.
On the questions of energy, energy security, climate change, and the European Union’s role in the process: it should be obvious to everyone that if the European Union’s leadership on the issue of climate change – whatever my own views on the subject – does not gain support from economies and major players such as the USA, the Russian Federation, Brazil, India and China, then this initiative by the European Union is isolated, a voice in the wilderness and, on a global scale, worthless. Our role is to persuade the other world powers and the biggest producers of emissions to follow our example, and this is where I see our role in the first half of this year, because in my view the climate and energy package is now signed and sealed, and is simply awaiting implementation, after it has been approved in the European Parliament, of course – as I hope it will be. The whole question of the energy mix is sometimes over-ideologised, over-politicised, and in my view the European Union should take a very practical and pragmatic approach to it, and should be looking at the short-term, mid-term and long-term targets, and the short-term, mid-term and long-term means of achieving those targets. I cannot imagine that countries which are 90% dependent on coal-based manufacture, such as Poland, are capable of radically, in some very ruthless manner, changing that dependence within the space of fifteen or twenty years. We must of course invest in new coal technologies, ‘clean coal technologies’, and in improvements to plant efficiency, because we cannot unilaterally and very rapidly change this dependence. We must discuss this, and must invest in innovation, and of course gradually adjust the energy mix in the directions we are talking about – in other words, in the direction of greater environmental protection, less dependence on fossil fuels and, of course, secure and relatively cheap supplies of energy so that Europe can remain competitive, able to compete on a global scale. The whole Russian-Ukrainian crisis is not only a crisis of confidence, but one where commercial, economic, political, geopolitical and strategic interests are involved. It is a multi-layered problem, and I certainly do not wish to be the judge of who at this moment is the short-term culprit, because for us, for the European Union and for European countries, both Russia and Ukraine are currently to blame. Russia is not supplying the gas, and Ukraine is blocking the transit of gas; in this matter, we must exert our influence in the region and must seek ways of ending this problem in the short term and – in the medium- to long-term – diversifying the sources and the transit routes, and ensuring the interconnection of electricity and gas systems in the European Union, so that we can achieve what has not yet been achieved: solidarity and the implementation of emergency crisis plans, because, although I do not want to be a prophet of doom, the crisis is not over yet, and the situation in Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Balkans is very grave and critical.
Based on my notes on what has been said by representatives of individual Parliamentary groups, it is not at all my view that our agenda is too liberal or too conservative; our agenda arises from the long-term aims and long-term agenda of the European Union, and the Czech contribution to it, the Czech imprint, showed itself in the very first days of the New Year as being well-conceived, because our emphasis on energy security may lead us, unexpectedly and none too soon, into some very thorough, in-depth discussion on how to ensure the independence and freedom of the European Union, which presupposes independence or less dependence on energy imports and sources outside the European Union.
Questions have been raised here regarding the anti-discrimination directive, the Barcelona Targets, and the low emphasis placed on social questions. I do not see it this way – though of course we have tried to reduce these basic targets to a rather symbolic form – because we certainly do not underestimate either the anti-discrimination question, or the question of protection for women. I assure you that we do indeed have very extensive experience of children having to stay in various institutions, and for us it is crucial that women and families should have a choice: that they should be able to choose whether they will, at a certain time, devote themselves to childcare, and we want to create the most varied mechanisms to make this possible, so that the family is not forced into a position of social need; and it is equally important that there should be an adequate range of options from child institutions, and believe me, a country such as the Czech Republic has a wealth of experience of this from totalitarian times, when this principle was rather forcibly imposed.
I think this is probably all I need to say by way of introduction. If there is anything Czechs do not lack, it is self-confidence, so I would like end by saying that we do not suffer from the slightest feeling of inferiority because the Czech Republic is the smallest of the big countries or the biggest of the small countries; we are the twelfth largest country in the European Union. I would simply like to remind you that when the Swedish presidency took over in 2001, the articles in the press were just the same as they were in November and December in the European media, doubting whether the Euro-sceptic Swedes, who do not have the euro and do not want it, were capable of tackling the issue of the single currency, whether they were capable of leading discussions on ratification of the Treaty of Nice, and indeed, whether they were capable, as a new country, of leading the European Union at all. If we now exchange the Treaty of Nice for the Treaty of Lisbon, and replace Sweden with the Czech Republic, those articles look exactly the same. We have no inferiority complex about that."@en1
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