Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-051"
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"en.20010704.1.3-051"2
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"Mr President, ambition is a practical joke played by the gods on mankind. They give us ambitions so we believe we can climb the heights of Olympus and then they ensure that we never reach the top.
The programme of the Belgian presidency is ambitious. It would be ambitious for a two-year presidency, but for one of 99 days, as the President-in-Office has pointed out, I fear that it is too ambitious. I welcome, of course, his intention that the Union should listen to the people. "We have to resolve the Irish question." How often have those words been uttered down the centuries?
But Mr Verhofstadt has to lead the Council towards a resolution of the problem, posed by the failure of Nice and by the Irish referendum. The democratic decision of the Irish people cannot be ignored or ridden roughshod over. Democracy may be inconvenient, but it is all we have between freedom and tyranny. Moreover, the Irish referendum and the concerns exposed in the demonstrations – even though they were hijacked by extremists – should be telling us something. As the President-in-Office has said: they are telling us that Europe is not being listened to.
People all over the Union, and indeed in the global market all over the world, have lost their faith in the institutions of governance. They are looking to us, their elected representatives, not for initiatives, but for reassurance. Not for change piled upon change, but for stability. Not for ambition, but, for that rarest of all human virtues – common sense.
If I may paraphrase the ancient Greek proverb for the President-in-Office: "Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first raise high.""@en1
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