Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-09-Speech-3-025-000"
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"en.20120509.16.3-025-000"2
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"The next item is the statement by the President on the future of Europe.
Why, then, does retreating into national positions seem more appealing to us than our collective present? Why are the centrifugal forces of the current crisis driving us apart, instead of binding us closer together?
Today, two of the greatest achievements of European integration are again being questioned: the euro and freedom of movement. What could symbolise Europe more than the freedom to work, live and travel without borders? The Erasmus generation takes this right for granted and sees it as an everyday part of life to be able to move around in an area without barriers and passport controls. Do we want to let this be taken away from us? Anyone who lays a hand on the Schengen Area is undermining the very foundations of the European Union.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us not retreat to behind national borders. Let us instead act together with solidarity to improve protection at the external borders of the EU and protection of the common governance of the Schengen Area at EU level – that is what we need to do to resolve the problems that we undoubtedly face.
I would like to say something about the euro. The euro was supposed to bring the peoples of Europe together; now it threatens to become a symbol of national egotism on all sides, and even threatens to become symbolic of division. Returning to individual national currencies would be fatal, and the political and economic losses would be dramatic. Do we all want to go back to paying in German marks, in Dutch guilders, in French francs, in Belgian francs, in Luxembourg francs, in Italian lira, in Spanish pesetas? Is it not obvious to everyone in this House that no individual currency could survive in the intercontinental competition between currencies? Instead of being a global player with a world reserve currency, we would then fall back into parochialism – accompanied by a loss of political and economic significance for which the people of the European Union would foot the bill.
Only together, ladies and gentlemen, can we move forward. In this House, we have long been calling for budgetary discipline. However, this House has also long been calling for a growth pact. This is because we know that, were they to go it alone, the individual countries would be sucked down into the vortex of the global financial markets. Only together can we oppose Europe’s economic decline and our growing levels of unemployment.
In the European Parliament, we have long been calling for balanced budgets. Indeed, they are essential. I should like to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that it is my deep personal conviction that balanced budgets are also necessary for intergenerational justice. Speaking for myself, I cannot accept my standard of living being financed in such a way that my children and my children’s children will have to foot the bill for my current standard of living. That is not right.
That is why we need budgetary discipline; that much is beyond dispute. However, this Parliament also says that alongside austerity we need initiatives to stimulate growth. We have long been calling for a financial transaction tax as a new source of income, and this proposal has the support of a majority that extends across the political groups of this House in a way unequalled by almost any other past project. We want to curb tax evasion. Let me add, ladies and gentlemen, that in situations of crisis such as that in which we currently find ourselves, the true patriots are those who help their countries – not those who take capital out of the countries and refuse to show solidarity.
If we are to take the idea of a European growth initiative seriously – and the Heads of Government are indeed taking it seriously, for we know that a special summit is to be held on 23 May – then we must also make clear how this growth initiative is to work. Indeed, we will also have to say what funding will have to be made available for it.
Ladies and gentlemen of the House and visitors in the galleries:
Ladies and gentlemen, that is why we need the European Parliament to make a clear declaration on the EU budget on this Schuman Day. Cutting the EU budget arbitrarily in a populist manner makes good press, but it is not sensible.
The EU budget is an investment budget that is used to leverage economic growth and create jobs. Anyone wielding the shears is robbing us of our common future.
No one needs a growth pact more than the young people of this continent, for there is a risk of Europe’s youth becoming the victims of the financial crisis and becoming a lost generation. The young people aged from 18 to 30 that I met in Spain last week – all of them graduates, some with three degrees, all of them unemployed – these young people are not responsible for the crisis, but they are paying a disproportionately high price for the rescue of countries and banks. A young man and woman in Madrid said to me that they could accept us spending EUR 750 billion to stabilise our financial system, but when would we have a million for them? Already one in four Europeans below the age of 25 is unemployed; in some countries, the figure is even one in two.
Investments in further education and improved training opportunities represent money well invested. That is what Robert Schuman meant by
solidarity. If the EU can save Europe from sliding into recession by acting proactively, if we can save jobs by doing so and even create new ones – well, that is
solidarity.
Europe is strong when it is united and shows solidarity. We need to understand that if we are to save Europe from insignificance. We want to strengthen European democracy. We want greater transparency in decision-making processes and we want to be able to choose between clear political alternatives. By the way, that is what the people expect of us. We want to declare our solidarity and obstruct national egotism. Equalisation between rich and poor, between large and small Member States has always been for the good of all.
We want to remind ourselves that we are a community of values. Our values are at the core of our identity. As Europeans, we should embrace our responsibility for the world – and we want to do so. A year after the Arab Spring began, we want to be partners to our neighbours in their process of transformation.
I constantly hear it said that the people will not go along with making things more European. I do not believe that. The lively interest shown in the elections in France and Greece last weekend – precisely because of the debate on Europe – shows that what happens in Europe is seen as European domestic politics. It shows how much people are aware that we all depend on each other, that failures in one country cause problems for all the other countries. It shows that people know that solutions can only be found together.
Even in the current situation, the European Union is the most successful political and social experiment in history. From the beginnings of the unification process in the Schuman Plan of 1950, through the laying of the foundations for the Common Market with the Treaty of Rome in 1958, through to today’s community of 27 nations – soon to be 28 – with a population of 500 million people, the development of the European project has been breathtaking. Portugal, Spain and Greece shook off their dictatorships. We have just bid farewell to one of our Members who was an active participant in this liberation. Two decades ago, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated, opening up the way for Europe’s unification. Our expansion to the east ended the artificial division of our continent by the Iron Curtain once and for all. The prospect of accession to the European Union supported the peaceful transformation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, thereby contributing to the security, stability and prosperity of the whole of Europe.
Many of those countries’ citizens expected accession to the EU to change the new Member States. Few foresaw how profoundly the new Member States would change the EU – would change
for the better. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe brought with them their own political and historical experience, which has enriched the European perspective enormously. I am therefore proud – and I say this on Europe Day with the greatest respect – to have succeeded my Polish predecessor, Jerzy Buzek, as President of Parliament. The fact that I succeeded you, Mr Buzek, showed that today we are one continent that is strong together because we want to be strong together.
Just over 60 years ago, a quiet revolution began which was to change our world. From the rubble of the Second World War, the foundation stone was laid for a project that has achieved something unique in human history. Enemies reached out their hands in reconciliation and became friends; a region racked by hunger developed into the most prosperous single market in the world; people cast off dictatorships and transformed their countries into democracies. We built up the most advanced social model and the best health care provision in the world.
In Europe, we share common values: democracy, freedom, solidarity and human rights. We must never forget those who dedicated their lives to the fight against oppression and the fight for freedom and democracy. The Iron Curtain and the dictatorships in Southern Europe did not fall easily; they were brought down by the peaceful protest of people – and in Eastern Europe, particularly by the peaceful protest of citizens – against a criminal system that was oppressing Eastern Europe. Some of our Members were among those who took part in that. On this date, we are greatly indebted to them. Still today, they are role models for those fighting for freedom throughout the world – most recently in the Arab Spring, when the revolutionaries in Africa were reminiscent of the uprising against these dictatorships in Europe. It is astonishing that they remember the revolutionaries of Europe, yet the example of the revolutionaries has become so unappreciated by Europeans.
Sixty years ago, a quiet revolution began that changed our world for ever. Europe has shown that it can be done: democracy, justice, freedom and solidarity can be combined. Bringing together justice and democracy, freedom and solidarity across the borders of countries and peoples – that is our European model of society. A model in which there is a free press and independent courts; a model which guarantees provision for the sick and elderly, and that arranges free access to education and opportunities for advancement to everyone; a model of parliamentary democracy and of democratic and political participation; a model of equal rights and of indivisible citizens’ rights that are enshrined in law; a model that constantly strives to achieve the highest social and environmental standards, and that now has the highest environmental standards in the world; a system in which there is no child labour and no death penalty.
We have created a society that puts people at the centre. That is the society in which I want to live, and I believe you do, too. I want my children and my children’s children to be able to live in such a society as well.
However, there is no guarantee that the type of society in which we live today will last forever. We need Europe in order to defend our democratic and social model, particularly in times of globalisation. We must not take what we have achieved for granted; we have to fight for it anew every day.
Today, on Europe Day, ladies and gentlemen, we want to remember where we have come from and what we have achieved. Not in order to heap praise on ourselves, but because our history serves as a reminder to us to defend what we have achieved. What we have achieved is something that provides a firm foundation for a democratic, free, fair and stable future for our children.
Together, we created a European social model that allows us to live together a little bit better every day; a model that combines democracy with peace, freedom and solidarity in a way that is unique in the world.
We should be proud of what we have achieved – and we should defend it, conscious of where we have come from.
More than 60 years ago, men and women who had themselves lived through two devastating world wars swore that it should never happen again. The pictures of bloody battlefields had not yet faded and the destroyed houses had yet to be rebuilt when these men and women came up with an astounding idea – one which, in view of the circumstances in which they were living, was almost surreal. To prevent a disaster on the scale of the Second World War from ever happening again, they proposed a quiet revolution: not to build walls, but rather to tear down what separates people; not to trample down their arch enemy for all time, but rather to put out a hand and help him to his feet; not to condemn the perpetrators forever, but to integrate them into the community and forgive them; not to close off borders, but to open up barriers; not to indulge in protectionism of their own national economies, but rather to closely interweave national economies; not to strike out on their own path into the future, but to take the road together, for the good of everyone. That was the aim of these men and women.
The establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community created ‘a
solidarity’, as its founding father Robert Schuman described it 62 years ago to the day. This
solidarity was based on the realisation that if we want to survive – in the truest sense of the word – then we absolutely have to live together and act jointly. The realisation that our interests can no longer be separated from those of our neighbours, the realisation that alone we are weak, but together we are strong – this realisation created a model that is unique in human history: a model that has given us six decades of peace, freedom, democracy, equality, prosperity and solidarity.
The courage of these founding fathers and mothers to find an answer out of their experience of the nadir of civilisation to which Europe had sunk, the courage to come up with an answer which said that we can only do it if we work together, so therefore we have to go about it in a united way. It should be far easier for us, with the institutional structure of the European Union and decades of successful history behind us, to work up the courage to recognise that we must act together as we tackle economic decline and growing unemployment than it was for our fathers and mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers, to whom this acknowledgement did not come easily.
Ladies and gentlemen, our forefathers built a Europe, yet lived among rubble; our forefathers built a Europe even though, in some cases, they were living in hunger; our forefathers built a Europe despite being war invalids, or widows, or having spent a decade in captivity, or having been victims of terror and torture. Yet they had the courage to say: ‘We will do it together’ – even though they had such a brutal history behind them."@en1
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