Karamanou (PSE). – (EL) Mr President, the World Assembly on Ageing is obviously
very important in that it is expected to provide policy guidelines to guarantee
the rights of the elderly and their quality of life and, most importantly, the
fight against discrimination. As Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou said in
Madrid on Monday, with people living longer and enjoying better health, we have
room for a new life model, a new society which pro-actively reflects
technological and scientific achievement.
However, that is not the
case today. On the contrary, every day Cassandras everywhere are peddling doom
and gloom, with prophesies of a planet drowning under the weight of 6 billion
people, of wealth-creating resources being exhausted, of the natural
environment being destroyed, of poor nations increasing and multiplying while
we in the developed world grow old and die out and our insurance systems
crumble.
The solution offered by
Malthusianists is to reduce the birth rate in third world countries and
increase our own birth rates. Such are the ethics of the developed world. My
own view is that there is a direct correlation between the uneven distribution
of people on the planet and the demographic problem on the one hand and the
development and distribution of the planet's resources and the question of
social justice, education, equality of the sexes, human rights and development
standards, on the other. The future of the planet is clearly not under threat
from the starving children of the Third World or the ageing population; it is
under threat from consumer standards and the way of life of the third of the
earth's population who live in the developed world. That is where we need to
intervene and that is where we need a new demographic policy.
However, until such time
as we have the integrated policy of sustainable development which the
Commissioner referred to, we should follow the sound advice of those who
propose that we abandon our restrictive immigration policy and give immigrants
full social and political rights. The population and workforce in Sweden and
Germany would have been seriously depleted without their policy of integrating
immigrants and fully recognising the right of women to work. Strengthening
these two policies could resolve the problems in the short term. However, they
will only be resolved in the long term under a fair – and very different –
system of economic and social development.