"Europe of interests has replaced Europe of values"

The attendees discussed several reports on the subject - “Non-institutional participants in the democratic regimes”, “Democracy in Europe”: crisis and perspectives”, "State of democracy in Europe and results of the monitoring in this area held by PACE.”

The head of the Azerbaijani delegation Samed Seidov delivered a speech and brought to assembly attendees’ notice about existence of double standards in Europe.

"A Europe, built on such fundamental principles as human rights and the supremacy of law, has become an attractive and has forced other countries to get developed in the European-based direction. But, at some stage Europe’s development was changed and it started giving preferences to the interests instead of values. One must know that values and interests are incompatible substances. It must be well understood that the values die where the interests come into being. We have come to Europe for the sake of democracy, human rights and the supremacy of law. But, here we have seen entirely different things. We have seen what the European founders were afraid," said the parliamentarian.

According to him, some countries, the organizations and individuals use the principles like democracy, human rights, supremacy of the law as leverage for strengthening the influence and weakening others.

"For example, whole world appraised the recent parliamentary elections in Albania as objective ones. But, the Albanian parliament till now can not operate, because the European Union and Euro Parliament support the opposition that gradually destructs Albania. On the other hand, Turkey has already accomplished all commitments that Europe stipulated, but the EU till now has not accepted Turkey. Today a part of Azerbaijan’s territory is under occupation, but we don’t see that Europe brings itself to realize its own resolutions that it adopted. Why are today breaching of the international norms and the right, ethnic cleanings, occupation of the countries, violation of their territorial integrity ordinary things? We face it every day. Why are the countries, which break the international laws and are proud of it, considered as worthy members of the Council of Europe? There are a lot of questions. Europe, conceived by Conrad Adenauer and Robber Schumann, does not exist any more," Seyidov noted.

According to the parliamentarian, "there is no Europe of values any longer, but Europe of interests has come into being.".

"The Europe of interests is engaged only in pursuing its interests and closes the eyes to other real events. But, the history shows that values just disappear where the interests dominate. If the values unite people, the interests on the contrary disunite them from each other. Repellent interests will destroy and create separatism in Europe," Seyidov added.
 

/APA/