Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-01-14-Speech-3-018"
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"en.20090114.3.3-018"2
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".
The President-in-Office of the Council has talked about our complex historical experiences. I take the view that the Czech Presidency is an opportunity for us to help overcome the existing division of Europe into West and East. In his novel
Jaroslav Hašek once made a pun, a German-Hungarian pun
which loosely translated means that the East gives and the West takes. Consequently, that is the way history has progressed. I believe that we have an opportunity to bring an end to this. I think that the Czech Presidency is also an opportunity for us to liberate ourselves from our own dogmas and prejudices. I offer, as an example of such dogmas, the recent article by Václav Klaus advising us how to overcome this financial crisis by temporarily softening social, environmental and health standards because, he says, these standards obstruct rational human behaviour. I would say that the opposite is true, that the Czech Presidency should help to ensure that we have a socially and ecologically driven economy, that is, an economy powered by social and environmental factors. I would like to note here that I agree with Prime Minister Topolánek on one thing: the need to rely on the flow of innovation to bring us out of the crisis and the need to develop – in the words of Richard Florida, if you will – a creative class that will help our economies escape the impasse.
I mean to say that we all need the courage to change. Stefan George, the great German writer, says that the future belongs to those who are capable of change. I hope that we will be capable of changing, our enslavement to the past, that we will be capable of closing the divide between Eastern and Western Europe and forming a single unit that is free from complexes about the superiority of the United States or anyone else. I should like to end my contribution by pointing out that, while Prime Minister Topolánek’s speech was peppered with noble intentions, resolutions and goals, and while it is quite right and proper for the Czech Presidency to set out ambitious projects – I do have one sceptical comment, in the form of an aphorism by the Polish satirist Jerzy Lec, to the effect that going on a holy pilgrimage will not stop your feet from sweating."@en1
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