Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-09-Speech-3-272"
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"en.20030409.5.3-272"2
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"Madam President, I too support the excellent report by our colleague Mr Morillon, which integrates Atlanticism and Euro-Gaullism magnificently. As someone who is far more of a Euro-Gaullist than Mr Morillon, I concede that he has managed to combine these two elements of European foreign and security policy quite outstandingly. We cannot discuss the issue of European defence as if we were debating the need for a European directive on jam. What is at stake here is the very
of European integration. I am not the only one who thinks so; many of our citizens share this view, as the opinion polls bear out.
The real purpose of European integration is peace and security, both internally and externally. For this reason, the time has come for us to make progress on the European foreign and security policy, and I am not as pessimistic about this as many others in this House. Yes, it is true that our governments have presented a pathetic picture. But if you look at public opinion in the various nations, it is apparent that on the key issues – including the Iraq war – there is far greater unanimity among the nations than among the governments. In my view, we need mechanisms and institutions which do not only capture the nations' common will but actively influence and shape it, for we cannot simply be led by the current mood. We need a responsible, long-term strategy as the basis for a common foreign and security policy.
I think the Convention is the final opportunity, in the broad community of fifteen – soon to be twenty-five or thirty – Member States, to achieve a common foreign and security policy. I hope this will be successful. I do not want a core Europe. I do not want a fragmented Europe. Yet if this wider circle of Member States fails to make progress, there must be a development towards a core Europe. However, this means a core Europe which is open to all those who are willing to participate in a common foreign and security policy.
Let me make one more thing clear: I believe that we need the Atlantic Alliance. However, as Franz-Josef Strauss, my party's late chairman, once said: ‘The Atlantic Alliance will only have a future if it is based on two equally strong and lasting pillars: an American pillar and a European pillar’. The fact that this European pillar does not exist is not the Americans' fault. It is our fault as Europeans. In the wake of the enlargement which we have agreed today, we will have more citizens than Russia and the USA put together. So it is high time we did something about our foreign and security policy, and that includes spending more and creating the appropriate structures. This does not mean structures of aggression, but structures which actively build peace. Painfully, we failed to do this in advance of the Iraq war, but it has been the European Union's mission since our founding fathers started it up in 1952."@en1
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