Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-12-Speech-3-089"
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"en.20071212.17.3-089"2
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"Mr President of the European Council, José Sócrates, Mr President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to welcome you here to the heart of European democracy, to the European Parliament, today on the occasion of the formal signing of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This is indeed a happy day, particularly for the citizens of the European Union.
Today’s solemn proclamation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights gives us a great obligation and opportunity to bring home the real essence of European unification to the people of the European Union, who number almost 500 million, and to future generations.
The essence of the European Union, ladies and gentlemen, transcends economic cost-benefit calculations. While these are important and will continue to influence our lives in the EU, we are first and foremost a community based on shared values, and solidarity, freedom and equal rights are part and parcel of our everyday existence. These common values, central to which is respect for inviolable human dignity, as enshrined in Article 1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, form the foundations of European unification.
For this reason, the European Parliament has regarded legally binding recognition of the Charter of Fundamental Rights as a vital component of any agreement on the reform of the European treaties, and the European Parliament has got its way on this point.
The reference to the Charter of Fundamental Rights in Article 6 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which the Heads of State or Government will be signing tomorrow, lends the Charter the same legally binding character that the Treaties themselves possess.
That 21st-century Europe should possess a comprehensive catalogue of human rights and fundamental freedoms which are equally binding and legally enforceable for all citizens of the Union is perfectly natural; more than that, it is the very core of our perception of the European identity.
People and human dignity are at the heart of our policies. In this way the European Union constitutes a framework that enables us, as citizens of the Union, to build our common future in peace.
Without the firm foundations of our shared values, of which we must be ever mindful, the European Union would have no future. Nor would we have any grounds to insist on respect for human rights in the wider world if we failed to recognise our own values as legally binding in the European Union.
Fifty years after the founding fathers created the European Communities out of the ruins of a shattered continent, our intention today is to proclaim solemnly the common values that form the core of our European identity.
Nor shall we let anyone, whether inside or outside the European Union, set limits on our resolute defence of human rights. We in the European Parliament have a moral and political duty to defend human dignity at all times.
In our world of today, we Europeans must project ourselves as a community united by shared values and stand up for human dignity, and we must seek intercultural dialogue. We can do that with confidence, and we must do it with untiring commitment – and no one will stop us.
In the drafting of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the new open and democratic convention method was used for the first time in the history of European unification. That method proved highly successful, and the convention became the model and the starting point for the entire reform process.
The European Parliament has played a particularly active part in the drafting of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and has brought decisive influence to bear on the substance of the text.
The Charter is the first instrument to enshrine economic and social rights with the same status as political rights and personal freedoms. It protects fundamental rights within the sphere of activity of the Union and in the application of Community law. It also gives all citizens of the European Union a right of recourse to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. We hope that the day might come when the Charter of Fundamental Rights is legally binding on all Member States.
Human rights and fundamental freedoms are indivisible. I therefore appeal to all Member States of the European Union without exception to subscribe, in the interests of all citizens of the Union, to this European consensus.
Today’s solemn proclamation should also be an occasion for all European citizens who can assert their own rights on the basis of the Charter to reflect on their duty to the community of Europeans, the wider world and future generations. There are no rights without responsibilities. Solidarity is what unites us.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights that we proclaim today symbolises the momentous journey towards a Union of the people of Europe which we have been making together over the past fifty years.
We are creating a people’s Europe and giving our European Union a solid foundation of common fundamental democratic rights. Today’s solemn proclamation shows that our community based on shared values is alive and growing. Today that set of common values will be embedded in the lives and minds of the population of the Union. This day is a great triumph for the citizens of the European Union, and all of us can rejoice at that with heart and soul.
This Charter is proof that, when we laid the foundations of the European Union, we had learned the most important lesson from European history, and today we continue to regard respect for the dignity of each and every human being, preservation of the freedom that has been won and of peace and democracy and application of the rule of law as the driving forces of European unification.
Freedom cannot develop without respect for the rights of others, and peace cannot flourish without fair accommodation of each other’s interests. Freedom, peace, justice and social welfare are achievable only as an integral whole; none of these goals can be obtained at the expense of the others.
The founding fathers understood this and established Europe as a community based on the rule of law. The European Union is not governed by the concept that might is right but by the principle that power emanates from the law. Therein lies the true modernity and vision of our Union, a community rooted in shared values. Only true justice can guarantee peace for all of us.
This vision of the founding fathers has come to fruition. Far more than that, in the struggle between two systems, in which freedom and democracy were pitted against dictatorship and oppression of the individual, it proved to be the stronger and the more successful vision.
The miracle of our generation has been the end to the division of our continent. The fall of the Iron Curtain and the accession of twelve countries to the European Union were possible because the voice of freedom and democracy and the power of equal rights for all were stronger than those of inhuman ideologies in the twentieth century.
The Berlin Declaration, which was adopted on 25 March of this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome, states an important fact when it says that ‘We, the citizens of the European Union, have united for the better’, for it is indeed our good fortune that freedom, democracy and human rights have become a reality for all of us in the European Union."@en1
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