Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-07-20-Speech-2-021"
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"en.19990720.3.2-021"2
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"(DE) Honoured Madam President, I should like to congratulate you most warmly on behalf of the Group of the European People"s Party. I am also very pleased to do this on a personal level, for we have been working together here in the European Parliament since 1984, in a spirit of friendship and trust. Madam President, I wish you all the success that you would expect and wish for yourself, and which all of us here would wish for this Parliament.
When you relinquished the Chair in May, during the last session here in Strasbourg, you said: ‘I am now closing this session. That was my last time in the Chair as Vice-President’. You then received loud applause, something that neither I nor any of those present had experienced before, and everyone stood up, something which is generally only reserved for Presidents. That is why we are able to say today, wherever we happen to be sitting or standing here in this Chamber, that if there is such a thing as political justice, right here in this European Parliament too, then this political justice has become reality with the election of Nicole Fontaine as President of the European Parliament.
Jean Monnet once said: ‘Nothing can be achieved without people, nothing endures without institutions’. The European Parliament has come a long way since 1979 and, in Nicole Fontaine, we have the person we need to carry the powers, authority and honour of this Parliament forward to a prosperous future. I wish Nicole Fontaine the best of luck and every success, and she will always be able to count on the largest party in this House, which made this proposal from a sense of political duty and for the sake of democracy.
But I should also like to pay a few words of tribute to Mario Soares. He is one of Portugal"s great characters and, Mr President Soares, during the Seventies it was you that prevented Portugal from exchanging one dictatorship for another. You are a great statesman and a great European, and although we could not elect you as well, we still have great respect for you.
(Loud applause)
Heidi Hautala, we have worked very well together over the last few days, and, indeed, this finds expression in the fact that as leader of the Green Party you are sitting here in the first row, as is the leader of the Liberals, Pat Cox. Let us continue to work within this spirit of openness and culture of fairness and, notwithstanding our personal political differences, which is to be expected in a democracy, let us get down to business today and drive European integration forward. Madam President, these are my wishes for you and for us all.
(Applause)"@en1
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