Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-017"
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"en.20001003.2.2-017"2
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"Madam President, Mr Prodi, this morning has been your finest hour since you took over the leadership of the European Commission. I believe that you have chosen an appropriate moment, that you have spelled out a coherent and significant vision and that you have formulated a challenge with great personal conviction. I say to you as a parliamentarian that I note with great respect that it was on the floor of this Chamber that you chose to deliver this important, strategic vision.
In listening to the debates of recent months – the creeping intergovernmentalism in the wider European debate and the debate in Denmark about almost everything but the euro – I was reminded of the words of a very famous Nobel laureate and Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, when he talked in the context of another political struggle in the following terms: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity"
Today, President Prodi, you have shown conviction and passionate intensity. I say to you, stay on this path. Mobilise this House with you. As you know, we will go with you. Mobilise your Commission to deliver this message; bring this message to Ecofin; bring this message to the General Affairs Council; bring this message to the capital cities; bring your message to the media; bring your message to the people of Europe. We are now having a debate about the heart and soul of the kind of Union we want to build. What you have spelled out today in respecting what I call the "traditional Community method" – which has been getting a rough ride in recent debates – is an approach which cares about balance and balancing out the differences and the interests of the large and small; which cares about bringing to the European project a capacity to get things done. Even in the past when we have chosen the path of intergovernmentalism, in the Schengen agreement for instance, we have discovered that the very lack of instruments which surrounded it has obliged it to start moving back to the Community method.
In relation to your remarks on Mr Solana there is a very important vision there. You saw from the way the House responded that you will have great support in the long term. But in the short term, my group deplores the technocrats' coup this summer who in adopting a code of secrecy rather than a code of transparency shut down our right to know, let alone our right to be consulted. We will do battle on that. We ask you to join us in the name of transparency.
To conclude, on behalf of my group, Mr Prodi has today spelled out what we believe in. In another battle in another place Winston Churchill once said that his nation would never surrender and talked about fighting on the beaches, fighting on the landing grounds and fighting in the fields and the streets. We have to become street fighters for Europe. You have to keep that passionate intensity and get that message across because we are fighting for the heart and soul of what we believe in."@en1
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