Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-22-Speech-3-036"
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"en.20050622.13.3-036"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the summit that brought the Luxembourg Presidency to a close did not yield the success for which most of us in this House had hoped. We all know what was decided in Brussels and, moreover, what was not. I now want to convey two messages on behalf of Luxembourg’s Members of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats. The first is a message of appreciation for the outstanding achievements of the Luxembourg Presidency in general and of the President, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, in particular. When individual Heads of State or Government are so arrogant, presumptuous and motivated by pure self-interest as to be prepared to jeopardise the progress of the European project and the success of enlargement, then we cannot expect what comes out of the summit to move Europe any further forward.
I do not propose to enlarge on what consequences this may have for the future of the European Union, but what I will say is that, if a few European Heads of Government want to put on the sort of performance that we saw last week, then we will not be able to win back the trust of those who, in France and the Netherlands, voted against the European Constitution.
My second message I bring as one who survived the Second World War, as one who, well advanced in years, is able, in this House, to work for the European cause alongside Members from the Member States in Central and Eastern Europe, and as one who can do no other than quote what Mr Juncker said: ‘The last European Council makes me feel ashamed.’ I am ashamed of the evident fact that certain Heads of Government in the western half of our continent have no concept of what the eastward enlargement is all about, nor of the European Union being anything other than a continental bargain-basement. I am ashamed of our inability, over a year after enlargement, to motivate people between Tallinn and Ljubljana and to persuade them that their sacrifices, their achievements and their endurance over the last 15 years were anything other than futile. We should all be ashamed of the way in which certain participants in the summit behaved. If the founding fathers had behaved as they did, there would have been no united Europe, and half a billion Europeans would never have known peace, freedom and prosperity.
Europe will change and continue to develop, just as it did after the French National Assembly rejected the European Defence Community. For my part, I can do no other than hope that the changes that this continent will undergo and experience over the years to come will show no trace of the pettiness and egoism that caused the last European Council to fail."@en1
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