Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-05-Speech-3-019"
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"en.20060705.2.3-019"2
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".
Mr President, listening to Mr Vanhanen’s speech I experienced that déjà vu moment – we have been here before, because it is the same speech with every incoming Presidency.
I started to ask myself, Mr Vanhanen, who do you really represent? Are you here today giving us the express will of your own nation? Well, I wonder, because the last comprehensive Eurobarometer poll carried out in autumn 2005 showed that only 38% of your fellow countrymen think membership of the European Union has been a good thing. Therefore the message from them is pretty clear: they do not want more Europe. And yet here you are today telling us that the medicine the rest of us need is that we must have more Europe, we must have the Constitution, we must press ahead.
What you represent is the professional political class in Europe, who of course are all in favour of the European Union. My view is that it was an absolute democratic disgrace that, at the recent Brussels Summit, all 25 Heads of State and Government agreed to end the period of reflection and to begin to implement the Constitution against the wishes that the Dutch and French people expressed in their referendums last year.
So public opinion does not matter a damn, does it? It is business as usual and you are going to press on with enlargement; you are going to press on with a common asylum policy despite the fact that your own countrymen and virtually nobody else wants it; and I heard you say you are going to press for ‘better regulation’. Do not make me laugh! The fact is, this is already a bureaucratic, over-regulated model and there will not be any real economic growth until we deregulate and free up our businesses.
If you were a democrat and not an EU nationalist, you would put a case for free and fair open referendums, so that the peoples of Europe could express their will. I will not be holding my breath."@en1
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