Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-14-Speech-4-147"
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"en.20001214.4.4-147"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am not particularly qualified – in fact none of us is – to deal with this question which is, as the Commissioner has said, a technical problem. After all, we are lacking information because the British Government appears to be covering up the major part of the matter. Maybe the incident is serious, maybe it is not. The British Government is acting just as the Russian Government did recently when one of its submarines was damaged. Perhaps both governments were right to do so.
But I must still point out that, however worrying, this affair also has its amusing side and, if nothing else, illustrates the current state of Europe, the Europe of Nice. Obviously, it is a cause of concern to the bordering countries of Spain and Morocco, and also to the people of Gibraltar, who are rightly worried about the implications of this affair, especially as information seems to leaking out more slowly than water from a frozen pipe.
It is significant first and foremost, and this is the point I should like to stress, because it illustrates the current state of our so-called united Europe and, from this point of view, sovereignists may even find it amusing. We keep on being told that there is a European people. Well, here is an example of one Member State treating public opinion in another Member State just as it would in any other country in the world, just as if, at the end of the day, there were no
fifty years after the start of the European project, just as if European solidarity had made no progress whatsoever. And we also hear voices being raised, all highly official and all very pro-European voices, taking advantage of the situation to call for nothing less than disarmament of nuclear submarines, just as if Europe should give nuclear monopoly to other powers. And all this against the rather mediaeval backdrop of territorial dispute between two Member States, a dispute which is far from being settled.
What we are in fact seeing here, in both the minor and major incidents, is the extent to which the Europe of Nice, designed to be a driving force, has in fact broken down, irretrievably broken down, for the reasons clearly described by Mr Bourlanges the day after the Nice Summit. These reasons stem quite simply from the fact that it is running on empty and it has no men of vision capable of seeing the world and history as one. In fact, it was inevitable in such a serious period of ebb or breakdown in Europe, that obstacles of the scale of the Rock of Gibraltar and all sorts of problems such as terrorism would rear their heads. Because we have destroyed any sense of national identity and have failed to replace it with the strong sense of identity which European citizenship should have represented, regional idiosyncrasies are bound to take root.
Mr Bourlanges’ finding is correct. For him it is cause for complaint, to us it is cause for satisfaction: that is the only difference between us."@en1
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"affectio societatis"1
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