Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-12-15-Speech-2-358"
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"en.20091215.21.2-358"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the position of the group that I represent, the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group, is crystal clear: with this oral question, we are asking the Commission to challenge the implementation of the ruling against crucifixes in school classrooms, handed down by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg which, I would emphasise, is not an EU institution.
In our view, this decision, and I want this to be absolutely clear, is an unacceptable breach of the principle of subsidiarity. This principle is a mainstay of the European Union as well as a guarantee of the rights of the peoples and of the Member States. The European Union, as we conceive and support it, would be unthinkable without the support and grounding of the principle of subsidiarity.
I will start with a general remark: obviously nobody – let us look first at the substance of this ruling – could consider the removal of someone and something which was already there to be an act of democracy and freedom, as some have claimed, but rather an action of the thought police, an anti-democratic act. If a crucifix is hanging on a school wall and it is torn down, that wall is not a secular wall but an empty wall, with the void intended as a confessional symbol, an act of negative education, the worst kind imaginable, which can be viewed as one of the many signs of the cultural and spiritual suicide of the West.
The ruling of the Strasbourg Court presupposes a concept of religious freedom which, if taken to its logical conclusion, would go so far as to ensure, to impose a sense of predominance over each citizen, required to live in an environment in keeping with the Court’s beliefs. I do not believe that this is religious freedom: this distorts the true sense of religious freedom; we are dealing with a negative right, or rather the right to be free of the obligation to perform religious practices. There must be no misunderstandings when we speak of religious freedom: we are not talking about something vague by any means.
We are dealing with something quite different here: displaying a crucifix is not just a matter of faith in our culture, but something much more important, something with a universal value. The symbol of the cross, the symbolism of the cross conveys a message that is universal in scope; a message, moreover, of peace and fraternity, as taught to us by René Guénon, the great metaphysicist, to mention just one name. From the traditional point of view of these great scholars of traditional culture, this value is extremely clear but, at the same time, it is just as clear that with this ruling, we are dealing with the expression of anti-traditional views which encourage everyone to think in the same way. This is something that runs counter to the true spirit of the European Union, and this is what is astonishing.
It is almost as if there is the intention to turn the peoples away from any reminder of values and symbols that express verticality and spirituality. Leaving aside the historical facts, the link to a specific religion, this is, I repeat, a universal symbol. The European Union, on the other hand, must safeguard the right of the peoples to continue using symbols, starting with the symbol of the cross.
Europe must be bold enough to take a metahistorical perspective on these fundamental questions, and resume its role as a cradle and centre, including in spiritual terms. It must return to the European peoples the freedom to keep and venerate the symbols of their identity in accordance with a cardinal principle of the legal and political structure of the European Union: the principle of subsidiarity. The whole question turns precisely on this aspect, on the fundamental nature of the principle of subsidiarity.
In conclusion, this issue enables us to reflect on and to debate a key question: what does religious freedom mean for Europe? Well, I would like to say that it is precisely the ruling of the Strasbourg Court that is riding roughshod over the fundamental right to religious freedom, and which wants to prevent a people such as the Italians from keeping the symbol of the cross in classrooms as an indispensable reminder of their Christian roots."@en1
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