Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-03-Speech-3-046"
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"en.20030903.4.3-046"2
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"Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President of the Convention, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, having taken great pleasure in the excellent things Mr Pasqua had to say, I should like to remind you that, as history teaches us, it is better to design a constitution once the revolution has been carried out, rather than the other way around. Sadly, that was not the case when it came to devising this would-be European Constitution which amounts in practice to what is, so far, a friendly game of musical chairs between old and new, small and large countries and within and between the European institutions themselves.
There were, however, Mr President, many revolutions we could have engaged in. We could have effected an economic and social revolution, overturning what President Prodi called the stupid dogmas, established in Maastricht and reinforced in Amsterdam, that, increasingly with every day that passes, manifestly condemn Europe and, in particular, the euro zone to deflation and unemployment. We could have effected a political revolution by declaring our independence, affirming our vision of a multipolar world and defending the central role of the United Nations in world affairs. We could even have effected a cultural revolution by establishing, in opposition to the commercial organisation of the world, the right of peoples freely to choose their way of life and their own allegiances. We might, above all, have effected a democratic revolution by turning Europe into an extension of our national democracies, instead of arranging the latter’s demise, and by creating a genuine political space peculiar to Europe through the Congress you proposed and by having recourse to a referendum.
In order to do this, however, we ought no doubt to have been inspired more by Rousseau than by Montesquieu. Everyone knows that you chose a tortoise as a symbol, no doubt, of punctiliousness and perseverance, but not really of revolution. That is a pity.
That is why I doubt if the peoples and citizens of Europe – they amount, moreover, to more or less the same thing – would identify with this Constitution that there is a desire to impose upon them. It remains to be seen, moreover, who will be courageous enough to organise a referendum. I should like to add a small PS for the attention of the Intergovernmental Conference: ‘Do not abandon Strasbourg’."@en1
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