Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-11-Speech-2-064"
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"en.20050111.5.2-064"2
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"Mr President, we would be making a serious mistake if we considered the Union to be merely an economic entity or a vast free-trade area, or even a kind of superstate replacing the national states. Europe is primarily a great ideal, and it was an ideal for the founding fathers Alcide De Gasperi and Konrad Adenauer, from Robert Schuman to Altiero Spinelli, from Gaetano Martino to Helmut Kohl. Europe is our history: it is the synthesis of our cultures and our languages, our identity and our future. It is the Europe of values, of the central importance of the individual, of freedom, solidarity and subsidiarity.
We cannot think of a Union shut in tightly within its borders; we cannot think of Europe as a machine – albeit an efficient one – run by a bureaucracy that keeps changing the rules. On the basis of the principle of subsidiarity itself, Europe must instead solve the major problems of its citizens which other institutions are unable to address.
Does the Constitution interpret these values? The answer is substantially ‘yes’, even though we cannot hide our profound regret that there is no reference to the Union’s Judaeo-Christian roots. Such a reference would have represented not a religious choice, but the identification of our undeniable historical roots.
The decision to sign the Constitution in Rome was, for our country, an important acknowledgement of the work carried out during the six months of Italy’s Presidency. To be effective, a fundamental law needs to have life breathed into it; in other words, it has to be put into practice and invested with political power. That is why Europe, through the Constitution, really must speak with a single voice in foreign policy. It must win a seat on the new UN Security Council and it must be an exporter of peace and not just of special interests in the Mediterranean area and the Middle East. The world of globalisation needs this Europe, the Europe of solidarity, subsidiarity and human rights – the political Europe of the people whom this Parliament truly represents."@en1
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