Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-26-Speech-1-081"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20050926.13.1-081"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, today we are commemorating the 25th anniversary of Polish Solidarity and debating its message for Europe. We remember the days and months when the Polish people could take no more and when Polish workers went on strike in Gdansk. We remember the fight that set in motion so much more than simply the struggle for Polish freedom. What it set in motion was the fight for the freedom of the whole of Eastern Europe. The first stone to fall from the Berlin Wall fell not in Berlin but in Gdansk. We often forget, however, that the strike and the solidarity in Gdansk were preceded by years of Polish revolt against Communism. Many fought for freedom, doing so each independently and in different ways, but there was no combined force uniting all Poles around the same idea. Only when a Polish pope was installed in the Vatican did the Poles realise that they were united by their spiritual inheritance and that there were forces that would take them forward to independence and autonomy. And so it came to pass.
I myself was living at that time in Communist Yugoslavia and clearly remember the pictures from Gdansk. I could not understand how anyone could actually believe it was possible to topple Communism. When, almost two decades after Gdansk, the people of Serbia protested against Milosevic’s regime, they had learned something from Solidarity. They had learned that totalitarian regimes do not go on forever, but can in actual fact come tumbling down. They had also learned that democracy must always come about from within and that victory necessarily falls to a unified people fighting for its freedom. The most important message for Europe had already been sent by Solidarity. My fellow Member, Mr Sjöstedt from Sweden, who belongs to a party whose leader still calls himself a Communist, has just made a speech in which he paid tribute to Solidarity, a movement that fought specifically against Communism. This too is a message sent by Solidarity to Europe: that Europe does not tolerate either Communist, or any other, dictatorships or, indeed, any systems of totalitarianism or enslavement. The future of Europe lies in freedom, and that is something we all defend, and today most especially by expressing our respect for, and gratitude towards, the people of Poland and Eastern Europe who fought for a free Europe during the 1980s and 90s."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples