Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-12-Speech-2-125"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20001212.6.2-125"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, according to a press report, the initial comment by the Finnish Prime Minister, Paavo Lipponen, after Nice was: “This agreement must be remade”. We must surely agree with him, although we know that this desire will only be able to be realised after many years have passed, if, as I believe will happen, national parliaments ratify the Treaty of Nice. Hopefully, however, Nice showed Finland and other small countries that emphasising the intergovernmental European nature of the Council’s role will mean a continuous cycle of defeats for small countries in decision making. No one at the meeting spoke for Europe. When the Commission then tried to do so, its President, as we saw, was literally thrown out of the door. I would like to say many thanks anyway for the gesture
It is nonetheless sad for the future of Europe that no European statesmen were in evidence. Almost every country brought its own internal political problems to the meeting. When they got back home, the prime ministers then emphatically pointed out how they had achieved victory with regard to these internal problems. “We were able to keep matters under our own control” or “We were able to block European decisions”, they said in their own countries. The candidate countries were thus presented with a very bad example, which must have astonished the whole region, from Tallinn to Prague and Budapest. It is obviously a positive matter that enlargement can now go ahead. That message must be clearly sent to the candidate countries. After enlargement, meetings like Nice and the IGCs as they are at present will be impossible; integration will either really make headway or simply fall apart. Things cannot stay as they are now.
It is to be hoped that Europe will yield statesmen. The difference between politicians and statesmen is that politicians know well enough what people want today, while statesmen know what they will actually want twenty years from now."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples