Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-31-Speech-3-044"
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"en.20060531.9.3-044"2
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"Mr President, Mr Verhofstadt, some thinking is being done in Europe after all, it would appear. Who would have thought it? By a Head of Government, in the middle of a pause for reflection; and on the subject of Europe, too. I would thank you for your intervention and for the clear and courageous language with which you have broken through the governments’ deafening silence – or, as some people would say, cacophony – and, in this House and in the middle of the crisis, risen above all the internal political considerations and mutterings about renationalisation in order to speak on behalf of Europe. To do so is not pleasant, but it is important and significant. You have resisted the temptation to manipulate the European debate and the motives of those who voted ‘no’.
That is currently the big problem, as I see it. Almost all the governments now try to attribute to people motives that they did not have, as if those who said ‘no’ had done so not in order to vote in favour of a more democratic and more social Europe that is capable of taking action and in order to direct their protest against Europe as it is at present but, instead, in order to demand less Europe. You have, in actual fact, listened to the people and not only to the other governments, as the British and Austrian Presidencies of the Council did.
You withstood the hubris that persuades us that we were much too quick off the mark with the Constitution, had aimed too high, had asked too much of people and had set our sights too high. No, you have been one of the very few people to have understood that the opposite is the case. We were too slow and did not aim high enough. Our goals were not magnanimous enough and our visions were unconvincing and our compromises too lazy. That is why you call for the crisis to be solved not by slackening our pace nor by being weary, resigned and demagogic, but by taking a clear step forwards.
Allow me to add just one proposal. If we could agree to incorporate this step that you propose into a rider to the Constitution, covering many fields including democracy, social powers and individual responsibility for security, then we need not destroy the constitutional process. Instead, we can show people a clear way forward and a means of progressing further towards a higher goal. Moreover, we need not allow the ‘no’ votes to cause Europe to fail."@en1
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