Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-07-07-Speech-3-218"
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"en.20100707.23.3-218"2
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"Madam President, it is touchingly hopeful of this House to imagine that anyone would vote to join the EU in present circumstances. Not for the first time, the European Parliament is exhibiting an optimism that makes Doctor Pangloss sound like Cassandra. I have been visiting Iceland since 1992. I have been a regular, and appreciative, visitor. I have seen a country transformed in those years. Of course, it has been through hard times recently, but nobody can deny the magnitude of an achievement which has taken a people, in two generations, from subsistence farming and fishing to enjoying one of the highest standards of living in the world.
I am a democrat and I will respect the decision of the Icelandic people one way or the other. If they vote to join the EU, I will, of course, back their claim. However, I cannot imagine for a moment that they will vote to surrender the prerogatives of the Althing, which is one of the oldest parliaments in the world, or that they will condemn their oceans to the same sterility as the seas around Britain, or that they will hand away the autonomy and self-reliance that is bred in the bone of the Icelandic people.
Their most famous modern novel is
(
). This is a phrase which has a resonance that non-Icelanders find hard to appreciate. Unless I have utterly misjudged them, they will not vote to hand away that independence and surrender their democracy."@en1
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"Independent People"1
"Sjálfstætt fólk"1
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Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples