Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-28-Speech-3-025"
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"en.20070328.12.3-025"2
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"Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, we have just commemorated fifty years of the Treaty of Rome, and fifty years amount to two generations – hardly very much at all in terms of history, but a considerable age in the eyes of the young.
Madam President, your determined public action, combined with your personal modesty and your human warmth, does honour to Europe and advances its cause. Under your Presidency, two European Councils have been held, both of which are universally acknowledged as having been successful. On the crucial issue of energy and climate, Europe has shown the way by deciding to equip itself with institutional tools to face these great challenges and make its voice heard. That is how Europe must function and act; that is how our fellow citizens, and particularly the young, will make this project, which is more contemporary than ever, their own.
It has often been said over the last few days that the most frequently cited benefits of European integration – peace, stability, relative prosperity, the social model – have little to say to the younger generations, for they live with them day by day. To that, I have two answers to make. The first is that young people need to be aware of their good fortune that such things should have become self-evident realities; the second is that this vision of things must be set against the fact that the instability of the modern world – as witness the tragedies, among others, of 11 September in New York, 11 March in Madrid and, indeed, 7 June in London – makes it clear to all of us, of whatever age, that life in peace, in security, and with certain resources is not the day-to-day reality for everyone on this earth, not even in our own countries. I am also much moved to think of our fifteen British soldiers who have been taken prisoner.
Peace and security have to be worked at day in and day out, as will be illustrated once more by the debate that we will be having tomorrow morning with Mr Solana.
If I may, a few days short of my sixtieth birthday, try to put myself in the shoes of a young European, the advantages I might see in the European adventure might well be, among others, the greater ease with which I might learn foreign languages and the possibility of participating in school exchanges, internships, sporting tournaments and cultural events – all this while crossing virtual frontiers and using a single currency. That is not something to be sneezed at. Living in a village or a town twinned with another, enjoying programmes under the patronage of the European Union and benefiting directly or indirectly from the economic growth generated by the union of our countries are no small things. Being a national of states that present a more united front to our partners and competitors throughout the world, which are the leading donors of humanitarian aid, which monitor the democratic conduct of elections around the world and which send peacekeeping forces to many conflict zones – all that is not something about which to be indifferent.
As an example of such undertakings, I would cite the civil crisis management mission that the European Union will be undertaking in Kosovo after the future status of this independence-minded province of Serbia is settled. This will be an unprecedented operation for our countries.
All those things are positive and satisfying and do us credit in the eyes of the young and, I would say, of everyone. Admittedly, Europe is not a panacea and does not resolve all our problems – far from it – but nobody has ever claimed that it would. What the EU can do, though – and do better than our Member States separately – is to help resolve problems, to face up to new challenges and to rearrange our priorities.
Whether or not we wanted it that way, globalisation is the reality from which we cannot escape. We may well very often deplore – whether rightly or wrongly – its negative features, but globalisation does also have undeniable advantages, such as easier communication, simplification of information and openness to other cultures, to name but a few of them.
In this process of globalisation, Europe has a role to play, values to defend and a model of society to promote. Europe is not doomed to silence, not constrained to accept everything without speaking out and not condemned to be steam-rollered by events. If we so wish, we can influence the course of history, in the same way as we have done over the past fifty years.
I cannot let this occasion pass me by without congratulating you, Madam President of the Council, and, above all, thanking you, first of all because your appearance in this European Parliament three times in the course of three months testifies to the respect you have for the work we MEPs do. In so doing, you are setting an example that I am sure your successors will want to follow. Secondly, I want to thank you because, by organising – successfully, as we know – a great European festival in Berlin on 25 March to celebrate fifty years of the Treaty, you have shown that Europe is not just about the making of speeches and laws, but can also be about emotion, joy and conviviality. Last of all, I want to thank you because the Berlin declaration, which the European institutions have adopted, is a readable and powerful document that puts Europe back in the saddle and gives us a new perspective by proposing that an institutional settlement be found between now and the next elections, which will be in 2009."@en1
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