Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-24-Speech-3-120"
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"en.20100324.13.3-120"2
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"Mr President, the use of the referendum – direct democracy – is not an exotic version of democracy. It is the original form – government by the people and not government on behalf of the people.
So perhaps we should be grateful to the EU for introducing this. I think not. The EU only likes democracy when it can manage it and arrange for a result that it wants. We have heard that the power to call such a referendum will be limited by mischievous provisions, such as the EU’s competence and the EU’s own version of human rights, which, in reality, means political repression, limitation on freedom of speech and even on freedom of thought.
One final point is that democracy means government by the people – an identifiable and cohesive unit – and not government by an arbitrary collection of persons. Mass migration has made this difficult to achieve. Europe as a whole has become even less of a single people than it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, it is better than nothing, and we might, at least, demonstrate that this initiative was a hollow promise."@en1
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The resource appears as object in 2 triples