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Verbatim report of proceedings
Wednesday, 10 March 2004 - Strasbourg OJ edition

Enlargement / Candidate countries
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  Frahm (GUE/NGL). (DA) Mr President, Mr Verheugen and I are not, presumably, in much agreement, politically, about a lot of things, but I have to say that I have seldom heard so good and precise a description of the problems we are now to face. Nor have I heard so good and precise a description of our need to find a solution to our problems.

I believe that the lack of popular involvement and the lack of commitment on the part of the political elite is one of the reasons why we now see more and more Member States choosing to introduce restrictions in relation to workers from the new Member States. That is something I deeply regret. I think it is the wrong signal to send to our new friends and colleagues from Eastern and Central Europe. I am tired of people typically proceeding on the basis of populism and of unreliable figures and information about the way things really are.

I am also pleased that, in the course of enlargement, many forces have been deployed in monitoring the human rights situations in the candidate countries, and I think that this is one of those areas in which we cannot allow ourselves to relax, either now or after 1 May. We need constantly to monitor the situation. We know that there are problems for the Russian minority in Latvia. We know that the Roma have problems in many of the candidate countries, and we also know that they have problems too in the present Member States.

My recommendation is that we do what we once did in the Council of Europe when that institution admitted quite a lot of new Member States, namely introduce permanent monitoring of democracy, human rights and minority rights, and not only in the new countries but in all the EU Member States. That is what we need to do, Mr President. It will be an important task to persist in monitoring these areas.

 
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