Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-07-15-Speech-3-026"
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"en.20090715.4.3-026"2
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"Madam President, in terms of European integration, it is without doubt a good thing that one of the new EU countries, in this case the Czech Republic, held the Council Presidency. Less welcome, however, was the chaos which the Presidency is partly responsible for leading us into.
Of course, we could hardly expect perfection from a new country with little European experience, but we could at least expect a minimum degree of sensitivity. The arts scandal at the start of the Presidency could not have been blamed on the government in Prague, but the Council Presidency can be held fully responsible for its half-hearted response and the fact that the artworks remained on display.
However, the Czech Presidency showed political leadership in particular when dealing with difficulties and in crisis management. In this regard in particular there were considerable shortcomings: a 20-day energy crisis in Europe during the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine could have been overcome in one way or another; management of the Middle East crisis was, in my opinion, more than a little clumsy. And if the US missile shield in the Czech Republic was not bad enough, dependence on the US was also reflected in the Presidency, for example in the way that the Israeli offensive in Gaza was trivialised as defensive action.
Even the Treaty of Lisbon was only half-heartedly criticised and delayed by the Prague leadership. As a result, we missed an important opportunity to bring more democracy back into the European Union.
The fact that ultimately no agreement could be reached between Slovenia and Croatia with regard to the sea borders is also extremely regrettable. After all, Croatia is no less prepared for accession to the EU than the ten new Member States were at the time of their accession. On the contrary, it may even be better prepared. Even more regrettable, in my opinion, is the fact that Sweden does not wish to continue the attempts at conciliation. Croatia does not deserve that.
Overall, our conclusions about the success of the Czech Presidency are somewhat mixed."@en1
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