Diana speaks at the 16th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference

10.17.57am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 27th Aug 2007

Diana Wallis MEP, Vice President of the European Parliament, spoke at the 16th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference in Berlin this morning, Monday, 27th August. Read her speech below:

"Mr Chairman, Mr President, may I take this opportunity to thank you for hosting this 16th Baltic sea Parliamentary Conference in Berlin this year. In fact in the earlier part of the year of course all roads from Brussels lead to Berlin because of the German Presidency of the EU. In those months there were those in my office who took a particular liking to the Gunmmi Bears that the German Presidency was distributing! I guess they must have run out now. But I think we can only thank you again for your hospitality over this weekend and I suspect that yet to come.

"As an English woman coming to Berlin, the visits you have organised, especially to the Ceclienhof at Potsdam, are bound to make one reflective. We should reflect especially in this year how far Europe has travelled in the last fifty years. We have enjoyed unparalleled peace. The Baltic States and Poland are now part of the European Union and so the Baltic, the states of which are here for the 16th 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 dates from before the First World War, the second from the inter-war period. They both advertise passenger ferry services between my home port of Hull, across the North Sea 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 has always flourished when the Baltic has been open to trade. Now that begins again, I would say thanks to the European Union and its enlargement.

"This conference rightly concerns itself with the topics of sustainable development, social welfare, maritime policy and energy security in the Baltic region. These of course are issues that are on the table of all our respective national governments and parliaments, but they are also very much on the agenda of the European Parliament and 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 Union is about. If these basic and fundamental freedoms are not functioning between Members States of the Union within the Baltic, then something is very wrong and we should be working with the Commission to right these wrongs that offend against our basic treaties. If it is rather a question at the external boundaries of the Union, especially with our new neighbours or Northern Dimension policy partners, we should be searching for ways forward, building on the successes of our own Internal Market and ensuring that we do not create new borders, particularly within what should be the new cohesive area of the Baltic economy.

"Again if we look at the issues of maritime policy and energy security, these are also areas where the European Union is drawing up policies across the Member States; policies which this organisation both should and has contributed to and we should continue that dialogue. The European Union has the possibility to achieve much, both within its borders and with its new neighbours, and the European Parliament, which I have the honour to represent, has a unique experience and perspective to bring to these developments. We have legislative power with the member states' on maritime policy and indeed on many aspects of policy which impinge on climate change and therefore energy policy, even if that policy itself is still some what diverse amongst the 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 this weekend - it is that when our countries in this region co-operate, we achieve the most for 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 the Northern Dimension since enlargement and we have produced a very full report on this in the last months. This is still being followed up with the Commission, but many of us believe that much of the content can be achieved with better implementation of existing internal EU policies whilst the external part is for the new developing Northern Dimension partnership. In this latter connection, of course we had our Northern Dimension Parliamentary Forum in Brussels in February of this year which will 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 flourishing economy 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 go further 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 passenger ferry has sometimes looked like the stuff of dreams, but I wish I could live to see the day when there were ferries again between our respective countries all across the North Sea and through the Baltic in a new age of free movement and free trade for the benefit of all those we represent - for me all the way from Hull to St. Petersburg!"