Debate at the plenary session of the European Parliament, Wednesday 26 April 2006 - Brussels

Tobias Pflüger (GUE/NGL), – (DE) Madam President, the planned Vienna Summit between the EU and Latin America, which is the occasion for this report, will be the biggest multi-state summit during the Austrian Presidency. That is a good thing in that it at last gets Latin America back on the agenda. There will also, in Vienna, be an alternative summit with basic-level associations from Latin America and the EU, and it is this alternative summit that enjoys our group’s firm support.

These grass-roots groups are fighting, in particular, against any association between Latin America and the Member States of the EU founded on the neoliberal idea of unhindered free trade, and it is an unfortunate fact that much thinking of this no-holds-barred, neo-liberal, free-trade kind is to be found in the Salafranca report, which also articulates the idea of Latin America being brought into line with what the EU thinks of as concepts of security. There is at present a great deal of change in Latin America, much of it positive and deserving of our support, and it is fairly clear to me, on the basis of this debate, that human rights are all-embracing, so that all of them – individual and social human rights and the human right to independent development – belong together. It is this all-embracing approach to human rights that we should make our own, and ideological speeches such as Mr Tannock’s get us nowhere. What the people of Latin America need from us is support, not least of a practical and political kind.