Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-06-14-Speech-4-194-000"
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"en.20120614.22.4-194-000"2
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"Mr President, the right of every citizen to deal with Brussels institutions in his own language is one of the few remaining signs that this is an association of nations rather than a single polity.
I have very little patience with the argument which one hears very often, even in my constituency, that the EU as a whole – or at least the European Parliament – should adopt just English, or just English and French, or just English, French and German. If you remove the requirement for the EU to produce everything in every national language, you simultaneously remove the biggest obstacle to a superstate.
That said, we are adopting, if not in the literal sense, something of a common language in the way in which we debate these matters in this Chamber. We use phrases which one never hears anywhere except here: ‘respecting the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality’, ‘bringing Europe closer to the people’, ‘the answer is more Europe, not less Europe’, ‘the people are demanding that we do more’. These are phrases that you only ever hear from Eurocrats and MEPs.
It is difficult not to think of the appendix to George Orwell’s 1984, where he talks about ‘Duckspeak’: the engagement of the larynx without the engagement of the higher brain centres at all. When you talk in clichés you are almost certainly thinking in clichés, and that is why we are in the mess we are in."@en1
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