Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-29-Speech-3-035"
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"en.20061129.9.3-035"2
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"Mr President, as you can see, my group has organised a collection of speaking time today, so what you are getting is a speech in instalments – European rhetoric, new style.
As I said earlier, Prime Minister, we have had a two-year period of reflection in which there has been no reflection, any more than we have had the loudly-trumpeted debate with the European public. The Commission’s ‘Plan D’ exists on paper and nowhere else. Even though I hear all the promises from the governments, who never tire of telling us about their plans for rescuing the constitution, if I listen very carefully, I am reminded of the Trojan Horse, in that, if you put your ear to the wooden horse, you hear the clink of weapons and become aware that it exists with quite different purposes in mind, things that have absolutely nothing to do with what we have been, for years, hearing and discussing in the European public square, or with what I see as being the causes of this crisis.
What do we hear from the governments? We hear that they are putting a treaty together! Well, an international organisation really is the last thing that we need. It is not the sort of political community that will defeat nationalism. In actual practice, Europe always loses out from any such balance between it and nationalism. The public want a constitution because they can see that it is about a political community, and because what they had been promised was the political unification of Europe, the political unification of this continent. What we get instead is more talk of a treaty.
You also, today, promised us even more competition. Never – in the Netherlands, in France, or anywhere else in Europe, at hundreds of debates and events – have I heard calls for more competition. ‘More competition’ is something demanded only by the elites, by the neoliberals, and by governments. Let me tell you, speaking as one who has been given the chance to pick up what the people are saying, that what we need is a balance between economic and political integration, in the shape of a social Union. How often do you propose – through your intergovernmental, self-aggrandising management of the Lisbon process – to report to the public that it has yielded nothing? That is what the public demand to know. What has become of the governments’ dialogue on a social Union, on putting an end to tax dumping and social dumping in Europe? That is what the public want to know.
You talk about a sense of security; now that, if you do not mind, is what I call populism, for appealing to security always presses the right buttons, but not a word has been said about the Charter of Fundamental Rights for months, not even about parliamentary monitoring, as shown by the CIA abductions and the failure to explain just how and to what extent European governments helped it with them. Nothing is being said about the enhancement of Parliament’s functions, about a Charter of Fundamental Rights enforceable at law, or about the protection of the public – yet that is what the public themselves are talking about!
From deep within the Trojan Horse, I keep on hearing other things, like talk of military cooperation – security again – but nothing whatever about a common, democratic, autonomous foreign policy, about playing a responsible role both globally and within the WTO, a role defending a fair system of global trade and putting development policy on a completely different level.
I get the feeling that, in amidst this crisis, the ordinary citizen has been lost from sight. The governments, in the armour and costume of knights, have reappeared before us and are blocking Europe’s way."@en1
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