Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-23-Speech-3-024"
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"en.20100623.9.3-024"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank Mr Van Rompuy for his speech. I think it gave us a great insight as to why so much is failing inside the European Union today.
Mr Van Rompuy, you said the summit had happened, that the euro crisis had gone away, that we had stepped back from the edge of the precipice, and then you gave us the gem, the quote of the day. You said that the euro had been a victim of its own success.
Well, at least that will bring a smile to the faces of millions of people tonight when they see the news. You must be indeed a modern day Walter Mitty, a dreamer! You have been warned from the start that there were several countries that would not fit into the eurozone. You knew they cheated and lied and they bent the rules and yet you carried on with this political project, like Icarus, heading towards the danger despite the fact that you had been warned that things would not work.
And I really was amazed last week when you admitted to me face to face that there is no Plan B, there is no contingency plan to help countries like Greece and Spain and Portugal, which, at some point, will have to leave this currency. There is no plan to help them refloat their own national currencies. Just how much do these countries have to suffer in the pursuit of this euro dream? Just how much unemployment does there have to be? What level of civil disorder is acceptable to hold together a currency that simply cannot work? And I wonder for how much longer will the Germans go on paying the enormous bill?
The extraordinary thing is that you and everybody in this room thinks you are doing this to be good Europeans. Well, I would put it to you that this place has nothing to do with Europe at all – that there is no such thing as a European identity. Indeed, the strength of Europe is its diversity of language, of culture and of states. Ironically it is us – the EU sceptics – who will turn out to be the good Europeans."@en1
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