Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-09-Speech-3-037-000"
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"en.20120509.16.3-037-000"2
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"Mr President, happy Schuman Day, or Europe Day as you now call it, although I thought the celebrations were rather muted. The only bit of real passion we had was Mr Schulz slagging off the English, but that now appears to be a sort of popular sport in this Parliament.
When people stand up and talk about the great success that the EU has been, I am not sure anybody saying it really believes it themselves anymore. I think we are celebrating the wrong day. We should not be celebrating 9 May; we should be celebrating 8 May: Victory in Europe Day. We should celebrate the last time the Germans tried to smash the continent and they foundered and at least half the continent got its democracy back.
What we are celebrating on 9 May is another attempt, through different means, to smash democracy across Europe. I do not doubt for a minute that Jean Monnet was well intentioned at the start; he thought that if you abolish nation states, you would stop there ever being another war. He did not, at the time, of course, have the benefit of seeing that theory as it played out in Yugoslavia. But, like Communism, this has all gone badly wrong and the EU Titanic has now hit the iceberg. It is a European Union of economic failure, of mass unemployment, of low growth but, worst of all, it is an EU with the economic prism of the euro and this now poses huge dangers to the continent. We face the prospect of mass civil unrest, possibly even revolution, in some countries that are being driven into total and utter desperation.
But there is perhaps an opportunity; there is perhaps some good news. Now a democratic rebellion has begun. It began in Finland last year with the True Finns getting nearly 20% of the vote and we are seeing in country after country new political movements on the Right and on the Left making big scores. But that may not be all good news because what we saw in Greece last Sunday was rather reminiscent of the German election of 1932. We saw the status quo Centre collapse and the extremes of Right and Left rise.
You know, this project could even cause the rebirth of National Socialism in Europe. We are headed the wrong way. We must break up the eurozone; we must set those Mediterranean countries free; we must try to build a Europe. I want a Europe, but a Europe based on trade, a Europe based on cooperation, a Europe based on us sitting round the table and agreeing sensible rules on crime and the environment. We can do all of those things but we cannot do them if we are asked to rally behind that flag. I owe no allegiance to that flag and nor do most of the people in Europe either."@en1
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