Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-28-Speech-3-094"
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"en.20071128.16.3-094"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are very pleased to welcome Prime Minister Rodríguez Zapatero here to the European Parliament. We are pleased, too, that you came here after the Lisbon Summit, and that you came here just 72 hours after your nomination as candidate. We would have been even more pleased if the PPE-DE Group had at least been represented by their Group chairman today.
Mr Zapatero has talked about many different issues. On behalf of my Group and on behalf of the men and particularly the women in my Group, may I say a few words about gender equality. Very few heads of government in Europe have done more to promote the rights of women than you, Mr Zapatero, and the European Parliament owes you a debt of thanks for your endeavours in that area too.
Mr Zapatero, please continue with your excellent, modern and progressive policies. They are good for Spain and what is good for Spain is also good for Europe. Keep going, Prime Minister.
I can tell you one thing: Mr Daul has missed a good speech from the Spanish Prime Minister this afternoon. He has also missed a less convincing speech from Mr Mayor Oreja, so it was probably a good thing for him that he was not here. Since the empty seats on the right of this House also tell their own story, let me say that when Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt visits us, who belongs to their political family, the Socialist Group will be in attendance in the same kind of numbers as today, because I believe courtesy is a quality that you either have or you do not, and those on the right do not have it!
Spain and the Spaniards, represented by the Prime Minister of their country, have the right to be respected, and that means respect from all the political families in this House. We accord the Spanish people that respect. Mr Zapatero, you have thanked this House and you have thanked the European Union. That was a very memorable sentence from the head of the government of Spain, a country which for 40 years suffered under a ruthless and brutal dictatorship, and which gained its freedom and democratic diversity through its integration into Europe. For you, the Spanish Prime Minister, to stand up and thank the European Union does you great credit. However, we owe you a debt of thanks too, for the fact that Spain has succeeded in these endeavours. We owe our thanks to the Spanish people and Spanish democrats, men and women. Their contribution to Europe is a contribution to democracy, diversity, cultural progress and social stability. We must therefore voice our own thanks to the Spanish Government.
Spain is a model for Europe, as is the Iberian region as a whole. The same applies, incidentally, to Greece and all those countries which had to overcome Fascist dictatorships and set a course towards the European Union in the early and mid 1980s. As Western Europeans, we had the freedom to travel to these countries at that time and so we can compare them then and now. Spain is a country with a flourishing economy. It is a country with a great future, full of hope, a country whose people have made an immense contribution to peace in the world, a country which is economically prosperous and which is rightly knocking at the door of the G8 countries because of its economic strength. Who would have thought that was possible 20 years ago? So why do I say that Spain is a model? As you yourself said, Prime Minister, if the European Union’s structural and regional policies have the same economic effects in the countries which joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 as occurred in Spain, Europe as a whole can look forward to a very positive future, and that is why Spain is a model for Europe.
Prime Minister, Spain – you put this very well – has won out as a result of its integration into Europe. Like many other countries in the European Union, Spain relinquished some of its sovereignty when it introduced the euro. Relinquishing sovereignty over the currency means relinquishing part of national sovereignty. However, let us imagine for a moment what might have happened if Spain still had the peseta, and imagine if the Zapatero government, as its first act in office, had said, ‘we are withdrawing our troops from Iraq’. The US dollar could have played games with the peseta, and what economic effects might that have had? Relinquishing this currency element of sovereignty actually conferred a degree of independence and sovereignty for Spain. That is another reason why Spain is a good model, showing how European integration brings more, not less, strength."@en1
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"(Standing ovation from his Group)"1
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