Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-159"
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"en.20001003.4.2-159"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to discuss the applications for membership of the European Union from twelve European countries: ten in Eastern Europe and two from the Mediterranean, Malta and Cyprus.
These countries see the present European Union as a guarantee of future prosperity. Some of them, a short while ago oppressed by Communism and subjugated by the Soviet empire, or still divided by military occupation like Cyprus, also see it as a guarantee of independence and security. Well, quite frankly: they are wrong. They are wrong because prosperity is not generated by the European Union and its 80 000 pages of directives and regulations. For where are the millions of jobs promised by the Maastricht Treaty?
Prosperity is created by restoring economic freedoms and nothing else. Nor is freedom and security created by the European Union – as Austria, on the one hand, and the Balkans, on the other, know full well – because the European Union is, alas, totally subservient to the United States Government and the nations which have just recovered their sovereignty are soon going to realise that, tomorrow, they will be asked to renounce it in the name of subservience to the supposed world order.
Today, then, to these European nations, where the right wing have not ceased to defend national freedoms at a time when almost every other political persuasion put up with their enslavement, we are tempted to shout a warning, “Do not enter this house which is already suffocating us. Now that you have just emerged from your former prison, do not rush to enter a new one. Do not make an irreparable error. Mr Verheugen told you on behalf of the Commission that there is no going back. He also told you that expressing a point of view other than his was to indulge in populism. Populism is how technocrats choose to denigrate the will of the people when it is expressed in a direction which does not suit them. Remember, then, to safeguard the expression of the will of your peoples, now that they are free at last, since tomorrow they may, like the Danes, wish to free themselves of this yoke.”
If, however, the candidate countries were to persist in their intended course, we would confine our reservations to this brotherly warning. We should certainly not wish to give some false impression that we were in some way hostile to these nations that belong to our family, these nations that are European in terms of their peoples, languages and geography, that are Christian by faith and Western by civilisation, and, we hope, immune to all modern forms of totalitarianism, including those that are now approaching, after decades of terrible suffering.
So, if you really do want to, then come on in! But hold your heads up high and do not let yourselves be impressed by the speeches on corruption which the Commission representative has just addressed to you, for there is not one European Union Member State that is in a position to preach to you. Do not let them inspect your human rights record at a time when the Council Presidency aims to remove the Member of the European Parliament, Jean-Marie Le Pen, from office after an unfair procedure. Either refuse to enter or enter with your head held high, unabashed, and thereby become our companions in misfortune."@en1
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