kfajdsl/voxpopuli huggingface dataset:
opportunity to address you for the second time during this budget process as i did on twelve september.
we are extremely pleased to see that the financial gap between the council position and parliament's position is lower than in many previous years.
i want to thank colleagues for their comments this afternoon and i have taken on board the views that they have expressed.
i hope that we have a clear mandate because then we the rapporteurs will go into negotiations united we go into the negotiations with a clear set of priorities and we go into the negotiations with the determination to ensure that we deliver value for money
it is a mandate which will take us into the budget negotiations with the council.
it serves to remind us what a wide range of spending priorities there are in this parliament and it serves to remind us of the strength of expectations there are within the committees.
mr president the annual budget is always a complex process and this two thousand and eighteen budget being the last year before brexit and the last before the set of european elections in two thousand and nineteen will bring its own unique challenges.
in fact i could probably save myself a couple of minutes and simply play a recording of last year's speech because the issues are pretty much the same this year as they are every year.
costs with eu legislation.
when i spoke on this subject in committee and indeed it has been the same in this debate today i pointed out that the language that we use in these debates seems to be always the language of cuts' it is all about how much a proposed cut here or a cut there is supposed to be.
but actually what we are talking about here is still an increase and the discussion is whether it is an aboveinflation increase or a belowinflation increase.
two i believe that on many projects it is just better and more efficient to cut out the middleman and for nation states to do things directly themselves.
for saying that in committee i was accused of populism so i thought i would take a look at the word populism'.
i looked it up in the dictionary and it tells me that populism is support for the concerns of ordinary people and the quality of appealing to or being aimed at ordinary people. it just strikes me that only in this place could caring about ordinary people possibly be construed as being some kind of insult.
i have therefore offered to work with the rapporteur to ensure those savings are found.
we do support the proposals for these guidelines and we look forward next week to discussing the estimates.
we need to ensure that they like us are able to function properly but also at the same time limit their spending increases for the future.
of course to achieve the moderate savings pursued by the rapporteur and others within the parliament we need to ensure we also identify savings within the budget.
i believe there are potential savings to be found in things like the buildings policy and in terms of enlargement which the commissioner has mentioned himself but also in things like the proposed cost of a non european office which i believe at this time is an unaffordable luxury.
worse the european parliament has now engaged in a eur sixty million refurbishment of a building to be used as the european history house as if we did not have museums in europe.
the programmes are gaining maturity with time so we now have maturity of major programmes that started
could i suggest that when the vice presidents come to this particular point they should be looking at the us congress which does ensure the security of people going into the building but then allows them to flow freely through it.
the debts inherited from the dictatorships are odious they should all be cancelled immediately to give a breathing space so that economies can develop.
whether economic development and trade will deliver for or will fail the millions of people who overthrew the tyrants will depend on the nature of the economic and trading system. there needs to be an end to gambling and speculation on food prices maximum prices on food and other basic goods and
mr president rapporteur the revolutions in north africa and the middle east are historic they have given tens of millions of people right across the world the hope and confidence that they can shape history and that they can overthrow even the most brutal dictatorships.
they will fail them again if they push ahead with the free trade agenda and the establishment of true market economies.
the new political leaders continue to ignore the interests of the majority of people in those countries as the recent wave of repression against protestors demonstrates vindicating the statement by irish revolutionary henry joy mccracken in the eighteenth century that the rich always betray the poor.
the ngo war on want has explained that the creation of an eu mediterranean free trade area would cause the near collapse of manufacturing sectors in egypt morocco algeria and tunisia and a massive contraction in syria jordan and lebanon.
the eu and its member states failed the people in north africa and the middle east through their political support and their economic ties with these brutal dictatorships.
but the history of revolution has of course more than one chapter and the first chapter still has to be closed in many countries of the region such as bahrain and syria while in egypt and tunisia the revolution faces new challenges.
in addition the natural resources and major sources of economic wealth in these countries should be taken out of the hands of the multinational corporations and the rich and taken into democratic public ownership for use as resources to invest in the economy health care and education in order to create a society worthy of the heroism shown by those who participated in the revolutions.
with the exception of services negotiations with morocco we did not advance far enough;
an integrated mediterranean market will be much more attractive for investors.
we are ready to initiate negotiations as soon as the preparatory process is completed based on an assessment of the commitment of each partner to long lasting democratic and economic reforms.
two thousand and four this policy document provides guidelines for conducting reforms and promoting small and medium sized enterprises which employ as much as twenty five of the workforce in the region.
as with eastern neighbourhood partners negotiations will be subject to key recommendations by the commission.
the commission agrees on the need to enhance our trade relations on the basis of the more for more principle with countries where a deep and comprehensive fta is not immediately possible such as libya lebanon or algeria.
but this was largely due to administrative changes on the other side with transitional governments deploying resources to achieve other priorities.
we continue to push for a timely completion of this process.
the main objective of these future negotiations will be the progressive integration of the economies of these partners into the single market.
with many dictators deposed we have a unique opportunity in the eu to engage with north africa and the middle east and to help create a true social market economy in this region.
on this schuman day may i remind the house of the origins of the social market economy.
i believe it is time that we followed on from that christian democratic tradition and put social' back in the social market economy.
we do not need to replace some dictators with others whether they are capitalists or socialists or oligarchs controlling the markets and controlling the lives of people.
what we need is a social market where people not only have rights and social justice but where they have responsibility and a sense of enterprise.
if you want social justice and the wealth that is needed to create the public services we want in these new countries that are looking for good governance then you have to encourage the enterprising spirit to create that wealth and i do want that social justice.
i have looked at the failed system behind the berlin wall.
we are not going back to that system of protectionism where bully politicians control the lives of people.
let us look at who some of those dictators were and who they were associated with in their international political arrangement. i believe that with every right goes a responsibility;
a responsibility for each other.
people get up in this house and they preach about rights constantly misleading people that somebody else can provide those rights or that somehow by some magic formula we in this house can with our clay feet legislate rights for people;
but the responsibilities that go with them are not there.
we have to insist not only on good governance in the middle east and northern africa but in this part of the world as well where social market economy means that there is a true social market not manipulated not dictated not politically controlled and where social justice is at its centre and where people who by the sweat of their brow create wealth are encouraged to be able to use that wealth for the good of the community.
mr president the report claims that the arab spring is the greatest political transformation in the european neighbourhood since the fall of the berlin wall.
we need trade to be supplemented with institutions the rule of law constitutionality equal opportunities and support for small and medium sized enterprises in order to channel the fruits of trade to a wider segment of society.
the report also calls for the reconsideration of odious debt.
no western state no western country wanted to forgive communist debt no matter how odious it must have been so why do you not call on the italian state to take over all the debt?
mr president the arab spring was undoubtedly the most important political transformation in the middle east and north african countries in decades. despotic and corrupt but secular governments were cast aside and promises of freedom abounded.
however the transitional governments that have emerged so far have mostly failed to live up to their laudable commitments to plurality with tunisia perhaps being the sole exception.
the eu is a powerful trading bloc with a significant and proven ability to influence the conduct of governments through soft power.
there is now considerable concern with the election of some fundamentalist parties such as the salafist al nour party in egypt which are insistent on introducing hard line sharia law into the constitution. this jeopardises women's rights homosexual rights minority rights and in particular the rights of coptic christians who will not only be discriminated against but actively persecuted if this goes through.
however it happened four years later.
the totalitarian regime and machinery that was built on this ideology also led us to the enforced division of europe for half a century.
populists divide our societies into good and bad us and them. this undermines the democratic and open political debate while radicalisation and extremism gain ground. europe has already paid a heavy price for creating such dividing lines in the past. the experience of the two world wars taught us not to focus on differences but to create a common space to live study and work. our nations agreed on common fundamental principles such as democracy the rule of law and the protection of human rights. our societies are facing different challenges related for instance to security defence migration and
but are we entirely out of the woods?
rule of law. i hope that today's discussion on this sad anniversary of the bolshevik revolution will further contribute to keeping and respecting these common values in the future too.
they try to undermine the achievements of over sixty years of european integration.
complex of attitudes toward the western governments.
for me the russian revolution is not something from history books it is something very real.
but it brought about destruction famine and war.
the eu. populists use information technology to communicate the message even more
literacy. we need to put more energy and means into strategic communication and make the best use of the methods and tools which have proved efficient both in the eu and within our neighbourhood.
let me also remind you just as sandra kalniete did just before me my generation of estonians latvians lithuanians poles romanians and many other nations spent the first half of their lives under the totalitarian regime that the bolsheviks created and spread throughout the eastern part of the european continent.
it is not easy for citizens to discern fake news or to find and access reliable information.
i would like to conclude by stressing how important it is to prevent our citizens from being misled by populists. history shows the impact that propaganda and manipulation can have on our societies. thus it is our common responsibility to preserve the vital values of tolerance
there is this famous sentence by the philosopher george santayana those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.
we cannot close our eyes either to the worrying tendencies still there one century later in russia and beyond its borders.
the topic of today's discussion incites reflection on how we can learn from history.
as the historian anne applebaum recently put it it created not a beautiful new civilisation but an angry unhappy and embittered society one that squandered its resources built ugly inhuman cities and broke new ground in atrocity and mass murder'.
widely. this has brought along new challenges such as misinformation on a massive scale fake news and attempts to influence democratic elections.
for instance the valuable work and output by the east strategic communication task force in the european external action service shows us how we can improve and magnify our narrative in the eastern neighbourhood.
these challenges need to be countered on many different
protection human rights and the
i am addressing this issue here because in today's europe the populists target this union of ours.
when i look around in today's europe i find the real consequences the real legacy of bolsheviks more than i like to.
' you would have thought that was in the past. however last week the russian ambassador to the eu vladimir chizhov gave an interview to the baltic rim economies review where he states in the russian view the subsequent policies of nato and eu enlargement export of democracy and erosion of continent wide arms regimes have put to rest any hopes for a truly inclusive governance of europe.
skills. in particular media literacy has become key to fighting off populist propaganda and manipulation through
so on. populist rhetoric has created deep divisions in our societies on those issues instead of allowing us to work together on common solutions in
age. it was underlined that increased levels of disinformation are another core challenge including for democracy and the rule of law. this challenge can be counterbalanced by increased levels of media
news. this is a fundamental issue of partly foreign interference threatening to seriously undermine our democracies. we must not forget the important role of education and youth work
that legacy continues in places like china cuba and north korea. the ideology that inspired the bolsheviks caused this human tragedy.
the bolshevik coup proves just how fragile civilisation is and how the ideas behind it must be resisted by all of those who love freedom liberty and decency.
look at the chinese communist party today for evidence of that.
the chinese communist party today oversees a totalitarian system where they not only imprison and kill dissidents of any kind but harvest and sell their organs for a multi billion dollar organ transplant industry.
the essential evil at the heart of marxism is the idea that the end justifies the means. that idea unites communism and nazism.
marxism is nonsense.
marxism is supposed to be scientific. it cannot be wrong. therefore it believes it is justifiable to sweep away anyone who opposes it by any means.
they are two sides of the same totalitarian coin.
the nazis pulled the gold teeth out of murdered jews.
under marxism any depravity becomes justifiable but marxists tell us it is not real marxism and we need to try again.
marxist parties that seize power become dictatorships with only one goal their own self preservation.
we are duty bound to speak up and to act so that the victims of totalitarian regimes have not died in vain.
if politicians claim that they and only they represent the will of the people if they brand anyone who disagrees with them as enemies of the people if politicians try to limit or even abolish the freedom of the media if they believe they have the right to instruct and control judges
if you see all of this happening please be vigilant.
we look at history because we are politicians and we want to learn from history.
if we revisit our history we do it for our own benefit but especially for the benefit of our children so that we do not make the mistakes of the past again.
it is quite a miracle that we are now in a hemicycle with the directly elected representatives of five hundred million europeans who were never this close to each other at any time in our history.
so i would say just in conclusion how did we get in the twentieth century into this totalitarian quagmire that cost hundreds of millions of europeans their lives through repression and through war?
if they constantly look for internal and external enemies who they then turn into scapegoats when they themselves fail miserably in delivering the illusions they peddled to the people always jews at the receiving end of this always roma at the receiving end of this always minorities at the receiving end of this
if you see that happen please do not look away.
with all the shortcomings we still have it is a miracle.
it is a matter of great concern that apparently it is seeking to divide us and rule us by teaming up with the present forces of illiberalism nationalism and xenophobia and inflaming hatred and instilling doubt about our hard fought democratic values. i would say let us not fall for the temptation of the strong
on. we then must consequently show the same energy passion and determination to defend what europe is to defend who we really are and to understand that collective prosperity is impossible without individual liberty.
the concept fostered in the bolshevik revolution in the fascist regime in italy in the nazi regime in germany and in the subsequent fascist regimes in other european countries was always that the individual does not count it is only our goals that count and if individuals die because of that tough luck.
furthermore the soviet occupation of the baltic states and the puppet regimes put in place in central europe left our continent divided leaving people to the east with effectively closed borders yearning for political and personal freedoms and missing out on the prosperity that took off in our part of europe.
look at the fundamentalist jihadists who have exactly the same vision of being allowed to kill other human beings because they do not share your ideology exactly what the stalinists and the nazis did.
europe grows out of a free and democratic choice to join a union and pool one sovereignty so that the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts.
that is why i never hesitate to repeat the wonderful words expressed by vclav havel at a conference i attended in prague when he said our goal is to make sure that east and west regain just geographical meaning not moral meaning not economic meaning only geographical meaning'.
commemoration also helps us to recall lessons learnt from this dark chapter in european history.
through european history we know that if we abandon one of the legs of the tripod the whole tripod will topple and we will not be able to maintain these rights.
while the wounds are deep and countries are still coming to terms with their history the transformational power of the people to turn their countries into social market democracies where freedom reigns is a miracle.
let us never give in to these dark forces.
there is no more important event in seventy years of european integration than that wonderful event in two thousand and four when europe became whole again.
nothing is irreversible as the volatile politics of our continent show. democracy and freedom need maintenance.
on this the one hundredth anniversary of the october revolution it is good to recall the lessons of the
but terror to be effective needs to be indiscriminate.
it was the beginning of a wave of totalitarian regimes in which the ideology dictated that the individual was not relevant;
to make sure that the totalitarian past which is an integral part of all our histories is never forgotten so that the experience should never be repeated.
there were incredible numbers of individual victims of the political terror especially in the elite of the country whose experience looms large in our history writing.
this does not mean that i do not feel a collective historic responsibility for all europeans to make sure that this memory is never lost that it is part of our educational system in a way and that our children don't forget so that they do not repeat the mistakes of the past. i am certainly not claiming this as a commission responsibility or a european responsibility but i do call on national authorities
terror only works if innocent people are victims of it because it makes everybody scared and in absolute numbers it was the ordinary people who suffered most. i think because it was not mentioned before today i want to mention that we should maintain a special place in our collective memory for the many millions who perished in the holodomor in ukraine.
now grows together what belongs together' should be a leading motto in our european union.
man. i do not understand why this is again so tempting to many of our co citizens.
markets and currency are important instruments but not our end goals.
let us not fall for the demons of extreme nationalism which like alcoholism offer short term exaltation but long lasting headaches deep disruption poverty and despair. europe is ultimately an idea and a promise that it is possible to overcome age old antagonisms
it is also important that europe marks the twenty three august the anniversary of nazi germany and the soviet union signing the molotov ribbentrop pact to remember all the victims of the totalitarian authoritarian regimes that have scarred europe during the twentieth century.
the europe wide day of remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes keeps alive the memory of the victims and pays tribute to them.
our union is based on the tripod of democracy human rights and the rule of law.
that is why i agree so wholeheartedly with president juncker when he said in the state of the union address that europe must breathe with both its lungs east and west.
it is perhaps not surprising but it is dispiriting that the current government of russia which incidentally seems very ambivalent in its own attitude to the bolshevik revolution is devoting so much effort and so many resources into misinformation aimed at our societies and other democracies.
looking back on our history we can only conclude that we are lucky to be alive today and so we must cherish the open prosperous diverse and peaceful societies we have built where individual freedoms are not sacrificed on the altar of so called collective interests based on a totalitarian ideologies. but we must never take this for granted nor the fundamental values that our european house is based
this is something we as europeans of today can never ever accept.
the people of the soviet union made sacrifices on a scale which numbs the mind in helping to defeat the nazi regime but the end of the second world war did not alter the baleful nature of the stalinist dictatorship.
past. domination of one another is not the answer.
mr president some of the members of this house have today compared the soviet union with the european union mixing up open borders democracy human rights a market economy and democratic elections