Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-14-Speech-3-213"
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"en.20060614.17.3-213"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, when I was elected into the European Parliament 12 years ago, I would not have thought it possible that we would have to have such a debate yet again.
We were considerably more advanced in Europe then than we are today. It is an alarm call that, in today’s European Union, we have to address the question of how we can combat and get to grips with increasing racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and hatred of minorities - whether of an ethnic, religious, or sexual nature.
That is why I, as leader of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, am making a statement in the name of all of the members of our group. European social democracy – Christian Democrats in Europe, Conservatives, Liberals, democratic forces on the left and on the right – those who stood at the cradle of the European Union: they knew why there had to be a supranational solution to the conflicts at the end of the first half of the 21st century.
Therefore let us think back once again: what were their motives? What had caused the European catastrophes of the First as well as the Second World War, but above all, the catastrophes of fascism and Stalinism too? Hatred of minorities, a racist feeling of superiority, the exclusion of people who did not conform, the disabled, those of different sexual orientation, people who could be stigmatised as enemies, in order to channel general discontent and direct it onto scapegoats, those who came from somewhere else, who took our jobs. I do not want to repeat all that here, you already know it.
These people with racial madness, religious madness, were the firebrands of the first half of the 20th century. What, then, have we set up instead? A solution based on integration, on a community of values and laws, and on basic rights for all: no matter what religion they have or whether they believe in God or not, no matter what race or skin colour they have; no matter where they come from, no matter what convictions they have or do not have, no matter how they wish to live their individual lives, whether on the basis of family, alone or in whatever partnership they choose, that is up to them. What binds us together is that – in our richness, in our superiority - we can organise a society that says ‘yes’ to a community in which each person has his or her own place: Catholics and Muslims, Protestants and Jews, black people and white people, heterosexuals and homosexuals, heads of families and those who live alone.
Why should anyone turn race, sexual orientation, or belief into the subject of a political debate at all, except as a means to an end - namely, to succeed in one’s own political aims by victimising a minority. That is the most repulsive thing that European history has ever seen, and that is what led to this inhumanity. We do not direct our criticism at any one country, because unfortunately we have the same phenomenon in all the Member States of the European Union - not only in the new Member States, but in the old ones as well.
The criticism that we are adopting here is not directed against peoples or states; it is directed against the intellectual deficiency of those who propagate such ideologies - no matter where they are in Europe. They have no place anywhere, not in any society, and, I hope, not in this House either!"@en1
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