speech_by_mep_diana_wallis

Page 1:Speech to 16" Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference,Bertin, 27-28 August 2007Diana Wallis MEP, Vice President of the European ParliamentMr Chairman, M1 President, may 1] take this opportunity to thank you for hosting this16" Baltic sea Parliamentary Conference in Berlin this year. In fact in the earlier partof the year of course all roads from Brussels lead to Berlin because of the GermanPresidency of the EU. In those months there were those in my office who took aparticular liking to the Gunmmi Bears that the German Presidency was distributing! 1guess they must have run out now. But J think we can only thank you again for yourhospitality over this weekend and I suspect that yet to come.As an English woman coming to Berlin, the visits you have organised, especially tothe Ceclienhof at Potsdam, are bound to make one reflective. We should reflectespecially in this year how far Europe has travelled in the last fifty years. We haveenjoyed unparalleled peace. The Baitic States and Poland are now part of theEuropean Union and so the Baitic, the states of which are here for the 16" conference,have entered a new and exciting era, one with many challenges.At home in England on my study wall I have two reproduction posters. One datesfrom before the First World War, the second from the inter-war period. They bothadvertise passenger ferry services between my home port of Hull, across the NorthSea to the Baltic; regular passenger services linking my home town with Helsinki,Reval (Tallinn) and St.Petersburg. The economy of our ports in northern England hasalways flourished when the Baltic has been open to trade. Now that begins again, Iwould say thanks to the European Union and its enlargement.This conference rightly concems itself with the topics of sustainable development,-social welfare, maritime policy and energy security in the Baltic region. These ofcourse are issues that are on the table of all our respective nationa] governments andparliaments, but they are also very much on the agenda of the European Parliamentand the European Union. Let me start with the Labour Market and social welfare.These are central to the whole issue of freedom of movement of people and labour,two of the basic four freedoms which underpin the whole of what the European Unionis about. If these basic and fundamental freedoms are not functioning betweenMembers States of the Union within the Baltic, then something 1s very wrong and weshould be working with the Commission to right these wrongs that offend against ourbasic treaties. If it is rather a question at the external boundaries of the Union,especially with our new neighbours o: Northern Dimension policy partners, we shouldbe searching for ways forward. building on the successes of our own Internal Marketand ensuring that we do not create new borders, particularly within what should be thenew cohesive area of the Baltic economy.Again if we look at the issues of maritime policy and eneigy security. these are alsoareas where the Luropean Union is drawing up policies across the Member States.Page 2:policies which this organisation both should and has contributed io and we shouldcontinue that dialogue. The European Union has the possibility to achieve much, bothwithin its borders and with its new neighbours, and the European Parliament, which Ihave the honour to 1epresent, has a unique experience and perspective to bring tothese developments. We have legislative power with the member states’ on maritimepolicy and indeed on many aspects of policy which impinge on climate change andtherefore energy policy, even if that policy itself is still some what diverse amongstthe Member States. If we are to learn anything from the history of the last fifty years,and indeed from history before that - brought so clearly into our minds over thisweekend - it is that when our countries in this region co-operate, we achieve the mostfor our citizens: for the people that you and I are here to represent.As you will know my Parliament has become very keen on a Baltic strategy to theNorthern Dimension since enlargement and we have produced a very full report onthis in the last months. This is still bemg followed up with the Commission, but manyof us believe thal much of the content can be achieved with better implementation ofexisting internal EU policies whilst the external part is for the new developingNorther Dimension partnership. In this latter connection, of course we bad ourNorthern Dimension Parliamentary Forum in Brussels in February of this year whichwill I believe be followed up by a further Brussels meeting in the first half of 2009.It is up to us as directly elected representatives to ensure and to develop a flourishingeconorny in the Baltic and to push our governments together in this direction.Whatever we achieve in the Baltic however we should not stop there. We have to g0further north. Maritime strategy and energy supply are key issues in the Arctic too.The woman in the 1913 poster in my study waving from a cliff top at a passengerferry has sometimes looked like the stuff of dreams, but 1 wish I could live to see theday when there were ferries again between our respective countries all across theNorth Sea and through the Baltic in a new age of free movement and free trade for thebenefit of all those we represent ~ for me all the way from Hull to St. Petersburg!