Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-13-Speech-2-121-000"
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"Mr President, honourable Members, I would like to express my very sincere thanks for the kind introduction from my former boss, my friend Jerzy Buzek. I should like to say that meeting you all is also a very moving experience for me. I recognise many people here in this Chamber, and not just, by the way, from among my Polish friends, because I can also see many people with whom I have worked on important matters, including matters which were important for Poland’s membership and for the membership of the entire region – of our part of Europe – in the European Union.
Poland’s transformation was the work of the Poles themselves, but its course was determined by the aspiration to be part of a Europe which was moving towards ever greater union, and Europe was of great help to us in this. The Europe to which history after 1945 had been more magnanimous extended solidarity – solidarity with the Europe which the decrees of history had made their victim. Poland has not forgotten that solidarity, and here in the European Parliament, a great deal is known about the help and solidarity of the European Union – Parliament was a champion of that solidarity then, and Parliament continues as the guardian of European solidarity today.
Mr President, honourable Members, the Presidency of the Council of the European Union is held, today, by Poland – a Poland which is dynamic, full of faith in the success of the European project, active in external relations and committed to strengthening the achievements of European integration. The Polish Presidency comes, however, at a difficult time for Europe, for its people and its economies. We currently face challenges more difficult than any we have faced in recent years. In most Member States of the European Union, we are dealing not just with a crisis of public finances and a crisis of fiscal policy, but also with weak economic growth. On top of that, there are Europe’s demographic problems, which have implications in areas ranging from economics to issues of civilisation and to politics.
The role of certain financial institutions in bringing about the present crisis, their growing autonomy and the detachment of financial markets from the real economy and the needs of society are undermining faith in the rationality of the free market. Many economic decisions which have serious social consequences are made outside of democratically elected parliaments and governments. The insufficient ability of governments and EU bodies to cope with the effects of the crisis is giving rise in places to a lack of faith in Europe, causing europessimism in society and increasing the tendency to taking unilateral action and to looking for solutions in isolation.
Today, one of the most important achievements of European integration – the European social model – is being called into question. Its core, its essence, has always been a dynamic equilibrium between three values: freedom, justice and solidarity. It is precisely this model which has meant that life in Europe has been – and still is – considered to be the best for human society. This is why so many people from different parts of the world want to live in Europe, and want to get here by a variety of routes, often taking enormous personal risk.
The European Union and its communities are at a turning point, at what is perhaps the most difficult moment since the beginning of the process of integration. The fight for the credibility and the future of the common currency is being carried on by way of hurried decisions establishing mechanisms for reacting to the crisis and improving the coordination of macroeconomic policies. Although my country is still outside the euro area, we do want to cooperate in the creation and implementation of plans to rectify the situation. We know that at stake is the future of a project which is of fundamental significance for Europe and its place in the world. The collapse of the euro and of economic and monetary union could be the prelude to reversing the process of integration, and this could have the worst possible consequences, including abandonment of the Union as a political project.
Some people are talking about – or hoping for – an inevitable return to the past, to attempts at domination and to nationalist attitudes, to the re-erection of borders as a consequence of the collapse of the common currency. In Poland, we do not even think about such scenarios.
We do not entertain such thoughts, and are guided by our experience in Poland and the experience of the last generation, the Solidarity generation. We in Poland well know how easy it is to wipe out the civilisation and the achievements of many generations in the course of a few years. We have quite simply been there. The Union and each of its politicians need bold decisions, decisions as bold as those which, 60 years ago, began the process of European integration. Initially, not everyone understood the new character of the relation between sovereignty, on the one hand, and security and development, on the other. This is why the plan to establish the European Defence Community foundered. It is worth pointing out that the European Coal and Steel Community and, after it, the European Economic Community were not established with the involvement of all the countries which, at the time, could have participated. Later, however, they did join those communities, and are now participants in and beneficiaries of the process of integration.
I would also like to say – since Mr Buzek mentioned what I have done in the past – that for me, today’s meeting here in the European Parliament is something quite remarkable, if I go back in my mind to that most difficult of times, to the time when martial law was still in force in Poland, when I used to publish an underground magazine called
. The title came from the words
the Adriatic, Baltic and Black Seas. We strove to write and edit the magazine with the hope that someday – perhaps in the distant future – not just Poland but also the other countries of our region would be free and democratic countries, and that they would be able, too, to participate in processes from which my country and the entire region had been excluded for decades by the adverse decrees of history.
We must not remain idle in the face of external challenges and the problems which exist within the European Union. There are many things we have to change if we want to avoid social dissent on a scale far greater than that which we have seen in different countries in recent months or weeks as a reaction to problems of a mainly economic nature.
Honourable Members, the crisis is also part of the Polish experience. The crisis is not only a threat, but is also an opportunity to give a new impetus to the process of strengthening European integration; an opportunity to rethink and rebuild our common institutions, so that the Union can regain the capacity for further development and integration. This explains the programme of the Polish Presidency, in which our answer to the crisis is ‘more Europe’.
French President Charles de Gaulle once compared the structure of a united Europe to the construction of a Gothic cathedral. Here, close as we are to the wonderful Strasbourg Cathedral, it should be noted and remembered that the Cathedral’s medieval builders did not know all the details of the building they were planning – they did not know what its final form would be. They did, however, know the objective of their work; they knew what purpose the building was to serve. It is my conviction that this kind of awareness, this kind of long-term perspective, is also necessitated by the situation today in Europe.
Our objectives should be set by three related values: security, development and solidarity. New instruments have to ensure the European Union vitality, progress and international position. It is also essential to rigorously maintain the cohesion of the entire Union. This requires the open nature of the process of strengthening integration to be retained. The Polish Presidency will make every effort to finalise reform of economic governance in the European Union in the very near future.
I would like, here, to thank the European Parliament for its extensive involvement and its valuable contribution to improving the measures which make up the six-pack, the aim of which is to strengthen the Union’s Stability and Growth Pact and to keep the public finances of the European Union’s Member States under control. I would also like to appeal for support for the Presidency’s efforts towards rapid adoption of the package, which is of fundamental significance for the economic stability of our European community.
The success of the entire European project depends on its most advanced and ambitious parts. I am thinking principally here of the common currency, which, despite its present problems, is a great achievement. Increasingly often, proposals are being made to strengthen the process of European integration by basing it on the euro area. The facts of the situation, and this includes the reality of the crisis, have led to an openness to discussion on this matter. It should, however, be remembered that such profound changes – if they are not to harm the whole of the project we call ‘Europe’ – should be made by means of amendments to the Treaties. The need to obtain the consent of all the Member States most certainly raises the question and the expectation of ensuring that all Member States have the opportunity to be included in the process of increased integration once clear criteria have been met. It raises the question as to whether a suitable clear criterion should not simply be the possession of a healthy national economy.
I do not consider the crisis of public finances to amount to the failure of the common currency, but we do have to try to find solutions which will allow its permanent stabilisation and make full use of its potential to create prosperity for Europeans.
The present crisis shows that strengthening the economic pillar of economic and monetary union is essential. We must coordinate economic policy better, and we should develop the emerging Euro+ Pact coordination platform, which involves not just the countries of the euro area, but also all the Member States outside the area which believe in the success of the common currency and are showing determination in seeking to adopt it. Strengthening coordination of the macroeconomic policies of the Member States has within it the potential for further political integration of the European Union.
Recalling that editorial work today, work which generally seemed to have no chance of success, is also important from the point of view of cultivating attitudes of optimism and an optimistic view of the world. Since one can move from an underground magazine, printed in secret – however, it was not a magazine devoted exclusively to its own, Polish problems, but to the problems of the entire region – to a meeting with the European Parliament in a situation in which Poland holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, this is a source, a renewed source, of political optimism regarding the future of our continent.
Mr President, honourable Members, the international situation calls for increased cooperation from the whole Union. No Member State of the European Union is able on its own to be effective in influencing the international order or new events or problems, nor is any Member State able on its own to bring external crises under control. In the face of the global challenges of our times in the area of security, climate protection or solving the world financial crisis, only a more strongly integrated Union has a chance of being effective in influencing others and deciding together with others about which measures are adopted.
The present situation should become an impetus for strengthening European security and defence policy. The appropriate proposals have been put forward by the countries of the Weimar initiative. A great challenge for the European Union is the need to be skilful in pursuing policy towards its immediate surroundings. We have said a lot in recent months in Europe about helping the ‘Arab spring’. We remember 1989 and the famous ‘autumn of the nations’ or ‘autumn of the peoples’. So it is not necessary to convince anyone in Poland of the importance of the events in Africa and the Middle East and of the need to support the efforts being made for liberty in those countries. Attention must not, however, be focused only on the Southern Neighbourhood. We need a more serious approach from the European Union to its eastern neighbours than exists at present, for there is no conflict between the need for the European Union to be involved in supporting the countries which lie to the east and to the south of the Union. All of it is our neighbourhood.
What is needed is a long-term policy towards the nations of Eastern Europe which have the prospect of membership, even if it is a distant one. We see this in the case of Ukraine, which, under difficult conditions, is making efforts to come closer to the Union in order to associate with it and – perhaps in the longer term – to be given the prospect of membership.
I would also like to convey my personal impressions of a conversation with the President of Ukraine – and they were difficult talks about difficult matters. I would like to express my profound conviction that there is great determination in Ukraine to achieve the conditions which are needed for closer relations and for participation in European integration. This also includes work to raise democratic standards there.
The Eastern Partnership Summit, which will be held in Warsaw at the end of September, should lead to the formulation of a clearly written and ambitious political declaration. The partner nations to the east of Europe expect a clear signal from us as to what kind of partnership we want to build with them, how much we want to be involved in the realisation of their European aspirations, and how far we do not want borders to be obstacles to interpersonal contacts. How much are we really ready to work together to strengthen the common European identity based on common European roots?
Mr President, honourable Members, the great Polish poet, Zbigniew Herbert, once wrote something about the idea of Europe. He was an important figure for Poland’s Solidarity generation because he was a poet who spoke and wrote about freedom the way my generation, people of the Solidarity generation, felt about freedom and the importance of the struggle for freedom. Herbert wrote this: ‘The concept of Europe has always been changeable and imprecise for the simple reason that it is not the name of a continent surrounded by ocean and completely enclosed by its own borders. It does, however, evoke particular associations and, I venture to suppose, a faster beating of the heart’. Herbert wrote those words in 1973, when there was a deep divide across Europe that seemed to exclude nations just because they found themselves lying on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain – nations which had been a part of Europe for 1 000 years. I well remember the feeling of those times, the beating of the heart which accompanied timid dreams of freedom. Those timid dreams then became bold dreams of Poland’s participation in the development of a free world. I remember that beating of the heart, and I would like us still to feel emotionally bound to Europe, so that the very thought of Europe and its future still causes the heart to throb – not a fearful kind of throbbing, but the throbbing and the quickened pulse we experience when we take on new, bold challenges and make important decisions.
We in Poland believe deeply in Europe, and we want a European Union which is dynamic and bold, open and supportive. We want a Union which will ensure Europe a role in the world in keeping with the size of its civilisation, and a Union which will protect the vitality of that civilisation – European civilisation. We want a Union which will give all its nations security and which will be the right response to the needs and concerns of its citizens. We know that such a Union is possible. We want to build such a Union, and we want to do so together with the other nations of Europe.
Honourable Members, the history of Europe is a history of conflicts, a history of divisions, a history of feuds and wars. On the other hand, however, it also testifies to the irresistible aspiration of the nations which live there to achieve unity. Geographical, cultural, ethnic and linguistic divides have not prevented the people of our continent from building a united Europe. For we have come to understand that diversity is not a threat, but an opportunity and an asset.
The first fully successful plan to unite Europe came from a small group of countries and was born out of the tragedy of war at a time when the continent was split by a sharp ideological divide. The Schuman Plan and the European Coal and Steel Community were a kind of Copernican revolution in Europe. For just as the great scholar, Nicolaus Copernicus, changed our understanding of the world, so the experience of integration has changed the way we look at international relations, and this has been the case throughout the continent. Europeans have finally become convinced that cooperation and integration allow us to build a better future beyond the divides that are the difficult legacy of history.
The price which had to be paid for peace, security and prosperity in Europe – the voluntary relinquishment of a degree of national sovereignty – has paid off as never before in history. The plan of the European Union’s founding fathers would not have succeeded, however, if it had not been for the bold ideas of everlasting peace and European federation developed by European intellectuals. The authors of these schemes include the Bohemian monarch, George of Poděbrady, French princes and clergy, German philosophers – Europeans of all confessions and languages. There were Poles among them, too, and – as is characteristic of our history – they also developed their plans for unity and peace in Europe in times which were the most difficult for Poland, because they were times when Poland did not feature on the map of Europe. They saw in a united Europe the chance for our nation to regain and consolidate its independence. One of them, Wojciech Jastrzębowski, wrote his
which contained his
just after one of the bloody battles of the November Rising of 1831, as he dreamt of a Poland which was independent and secure. Today, we know that to build a united Europe, someone did, quite simply, have to come up with the idea in the first place.
Mr President, honourable Members, an important landmark in European integration – the real unification of Europe – was reached after 1989 and the fall of the Iron Curtain. The fall of Communism and the transformation of Central and Eastern Europe gave a new impetus to the integration of Europe. The Member States of the European Economic Community and its institutions – the European Commission and the European Parliament – undertook the difficult task of transforming the common market into the European Union, a Union in which the area included in the community was significantly enlarged. I will mention only three major projects, which, in my opinion, are symbols of that transformation: common foreign, security and defence policy, the Schengen area and economic and monetary union. At the same time, the Member States of the European Union have done something no less important and no less difficult, by which I mean they have carried out extensive enlargement. Integration of the East and West of the continent was possible and is still under way thanks to coordinated efforts on both sides of the boundary which once divided Europe.
The great enlargement of 2004-2007 required a huge amount of work from all the governments, diplomats, parliaments and non-governmental organisations involved and from many other bodies too numerous to mention here. In preparing for membership, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe underwent great internal changes. In our part of Europe and in Poland, we had to cover the road from totalitarianism and a centrally controlled economy to democracy and the free market at high speed.
This was done at a cost, and it was a painful cost, in the form of unemployment, a worsening of the political climate and a wave of populism. In Poland, however, it was possible to stabilise the political system and build an economic and financial system which proved its worth during the crisis of 2008 and 2009. We know from our own experience that having the courage to make changes quite simply pays dividends."@en1
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