Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-13-Speech-1-095"
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"en.20041213.10.1-095"2
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"Mr President, for the French members of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, the question is not about Turkey. The question is: ‘What kind of Europe do we want?’ We have always wanted a political Europe in tune with world affairs, a Europe of integration and not of differentiation, a Europe of common policy and not of variable geometry.
Turkey is a great country, a great people and a major civilisation. It would be unrealistic, patronising and even degrading to seek to absorb, realign and weaken the historical greatness of that world. To accept Turkey’s accession to the EU is to accept the risk of Europe becoming a society of nations, a preacher unable to practise what he preaches; of Europe dissolving into a strategic alliance that used to be against Communism, and will in the future be against terrorism; of Europe being transformed into a kind of worldwide Euro-Asian trade organisation. In other words, there is a risk that Europe will become wide open and bereft of power.
The Europe that we want is not diversity at the expense of unity; it is unity in diversity, in the words of the draft Constitution maxim. This about the European Union’s Project; jumping the gun is not a project! The EU is no longer accepted by its citizens. Europe must be built by working with the peoples, not by ignoring them.
It is this concept of common interest between Europe and Turkey that led us to submit essential amendments to this House, in collaboration with our German friends. I shall not detail them here, but I shall merely say that it is only by means of a privileged partnership that we can create strong ties between the futures of Turkey and Europe, without compromising either the European Project or Turkey’s historical role between Europe and Asia.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must be resolute: let us dare to fight together through the fog of diplomatic conformism, to stare reality in the face and to propose to Turkey a fraternal relationship of equals with the political Union of Europe."@en1
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