Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-06-Speech-3-133"
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"en.20090506.18.3-133"2
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"Mr President, my dear Mr Pöttering, ladies and gentlemen, this Parliament is the voice of 500 million Europeans and they are not sufficiently aware of this.
They are even less aware that this Parliament has a heart and a soul. Mr Pöttering, during the two and a half years of your presidency, not only have you been the citizens’ spokesman, you have also personified the heart, generosity and solidarity of Europe. Some say that it is not possible to fall in love with Europe; you have proved the opposite.
Although this parliamentary term is coming to an end, I wish to stress how far European integration has progressed and how much our Parliament, under your leadership, has contributed to this. I will mention only the most remarkable examples of this, which you have already referred to: the energy and climate change package, the Services Directive, the 2007-2013 financial perspective and, more recently, the regulation of the financial markets.
However, rather than running through a tedious list of directives and regulations, I would like to stress how much, behind the often very technical legislation that we debate and adopt here, our joint work has meaning. This meaning is the general interest of all Europeans. It is often said that Europe is removed from its citizens, but are issues such as toy safety, research into the prevention of rare diseases or of Alzheimer’s disease, consumer protection, environmental protection measures and the fight against global warming, energy policy or the defence of human rights around the world really removed from citizens’ daily lives?
Under your presidency, this Parliament has seen other major advances. I am thinking of the internal reform, which you have brought to fruition and which will make our institution more transparent and more effective, and of the new statute for Members of the European Parliament and their assistants. Under your presidency, this Parliament has multiplied the initiatives within the framework of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, doing justice to the great wealth of cultures and faiths in our society, and sending out the best possible image of Europe: that of openness and tolerance. Under your presidency, Parliament has seen the importance that it attaches to the future of the Mediterranean region and its desire to help bring about peace in the Middle East.
Mr President, on 25 March 2007, you signed on our behalf the Berlin Declaration commemorating 50 years of the European Union. That declaration reminds those who might have forgotten the objective of our daily work, in other words the integration of a free, democratic, tolerant Europe that respects the rule of law. By taking the initiative of creating a House of European History, you are giving a lasting dimension to the work carried out by yourself and your predecessors and by all those who, in their own way, have contributed to our common history.
For all these things, I would simply like to thank you, Mr President."@en1
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