Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-20-Speech-3-019"
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"en.20080220.3.3-019"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in giving my remarks I can certainly save myself the effort of having to go into the details of the Corbett-Méndez de Vigo report once again. The rapporteurs and co-rapporteurs of the attendant committees have themselves done so well enough. Therefore, in the middle of my remarks, I can take the liberty of asking a rather more basic question, a question associated with the fact that on a day like today, when the European Parliament is delivering its opinion on a fundamental achievement in the history of European unity, we might pause for a moment and allow ourselves to ask: why are we doing this? What is the actual aim of this practice? Why do we need this Treaty?
In the history of the people of this continent, 100 years is a short time. However, when you look back 100 years to 1908, a Sultan governed Turkey. Russia was ruled by the Tsars. This city here was part of the German Reich ruled by Wilhelm II. France had a vast colonial empire and Great Britain its own Empire. Fifty years ago, Adolf Hitler’s takeover – which took place 75 years ago – was already 25 years in the past. In the meantime Joseph Stalin had been committing his atrocious crimes, Auschwitz had happened and 50 years ago the Soviet Union, led by Nikita Khrushchev and the United States, governed by Eisenhower, sealed the post-war order of Yalta. Twenty-five years ago the power of the Soviet Union was exhausted and the world instead set off on the wrong track – as far as the economy was concerned – of ‘Reaganomics’.
Today we cannot even imagine what will be happening in 25 years’ time. One thing is certain: the only chance that the states that ruled half the world 100 years ago – France and Great Britain – still have of being able to secure their influence in the world today and of perhaps still being able to play a part in 25, 50 and 100 years’ time, is not that we put up attractive flags, but that we ask the question: how do I guarantee, in a smaller world with limited influence – because there are far more players, such as China, India and the Latin American continent, for instance – how do I guarantee as a responsible politician in this global village that my people, my country, are able to play their part in global democracy, welfare and social stability?
We can no longer go it alone. We can only do it together – the Europeans, at any rate. Perhaps the United States can survive on its own in this global-style competition. Perhaps China, too, and perhaps India – although China and India are already concluding cooperation agreements of a technological nature with each other. When we talk about this Treaty, I would very much like to talk again about why we never actually discuss the fact that the Industry and Development Ministers of China and India have been meeting over the past year to conclude a cooperation agreement.
Here are two countries, which make up a third of the world’s population, concluding a cooperation agreement! And we Europeans, what are we doing? We are staying on the right track, albeit not consistently enough and not completely, but we are staying on the right track, the track described by the saying: unity is strength! Anyone who goes it alone will lose out in the long run. Anyone who sails in an escorted convoy, anyone who brings a ship safely in, not behind a flagship, but in a line of ships on an equal footing, will win – whether we are a large state or a small one, we are all on an equal footing in this Union. However, we join forces in a framework that enables us to cooperate economically, socially and democratically as equals with other regions of this world, to safeguard human rights and peace in the world. That is the purpose of this Treaty!
Therefore, we social democrats, we socialists in this House, want to endorse this Treaty and the opinion of our rapporteurs on this Treaty out of a deep conviction because we believe that this is the right path. To those who preached 100 years ago that the world was to recover in the German manner or that the
was to dominate the world, or that in the
French superiority was to reign, or that the Caesaropapism prevailing in Moscow at the time meant that we were to worship one person as Emperor and God; to those who told the world that the flag behind which we would have to assemble was the most important thing, and not the spirit of the peace we consider most important; to those who maintained that nationalism and national primacy would lead to the objective, to those we can only say that the 100 years of history behind us proves the opposite.
François Mitterrand was right when he said in this House that nationalism ultimately always meant one thing: war. In European history, evidence has been offered to suggest that ultra-nationalism always means war. We would counter this with: nationalism is never the solution of the future! Solidarity among the nations: that is the solution of the future, that is the purpose of the Treaty."@en1
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"Communauté Française"1
"Pax Britannica"1
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