Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-061"
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"en.20000517.4.3-061"2
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"Mr President, I wish to thank the rapporteur for his serious and objective approach to Greece’s candidacy. I wish to thank him because he dealt with us just as strictly as all the Member States which preceded us in forming the single currency. This is the biggest compliment which he could give a country which, for a while, gave the impression that its economy was on the slippery slope towards general disintegration. The world has many examples of where such a slippery slope can lead; however, there are relatively few examples of a country which has found the strength not only to stop but to reverse the decline and manage to satisfy the extremely stringent stability criteria of today’s world.
This success is particularly significant because it was built on the basis of an economy which was not rich and not particularly strong. We do not need you to remind us that the Greek economy is weak. We know it is. For a nation to build monetary stability on such a basis requires greater effort and sacrifice than in a richer economy. The fact that the Greek people agreed to make these sacrifices is proof positive of their determination to break away once and for all, by their own efforts and taking advantage, of course, of the support of the European Union, from the fate of economic backwardness. And we shall make the same effort in the future, not because you are strict and we have to, but because it is in our interests to do so. This effort is dictated by our wish to have a better standard of living, to run a modern economy and to prosper with the rest of Europe. We are here not because we wanted to conceal our weaknesses, but because we wanted to fight and we fought and we won.
As far as we are concerned, we are a small country, but we are fighters and our accession to the single currency is a vote of confidence in this huge European venture; it is a sign of the fact that we support the European endeavour and we hope that other, far richer countries will see this and follow our example.
No one should rejoice prematurely at the present vicissitudes of the single currency. In joining, we have shown our trust in Europe, in monetary union, in the prospect of economic unification and in the success of our common economic fate. That is the meaning of Greece’s accession, that is the meaning of its acceptance. Europe has become stronger today, not weaker, as the result of Greece’s accession."@en1
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