Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-02-Speech-3-053"

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"en.20030702.1.3-053"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, mine is the last speech and therefore in some way also the most confused. My confusion has been caused to a great extent by the acumen of some of the speeches that came before. I no longer know whether the President-in-Office will preside over the IGC in Rome in the fullness of his prerogatives or whether, as Enrique Barón Crespo claims, he will be an occasional guest of the mayor of that city. Most of all, however, I no longer know whether the epithet ‘human atom bomb’ should be applied, as it has been historically, to the unforgettable Rita Hayworth, or whether it should be transferred, as Mrs Frassoni would have it, to Vice-President Fini. Therefore, in order to set my values straight, I have decided to make a dull but clear speech, something along the lines of ‘God, country and family’, hinging on the subject of Europe’s Christian roots, which is not an ideological subject but one of democratic procedures. Indeed, this reference is not a contribution to the clerical concerns of certain social groups but the historical memory of the truest meaning behind our institutions. Our democratic institutions are in fact the result of a freedom pact with the citizens, who transfer some of their own sovereignty to them in exchange for guarantees and services. From this viewpoint, the states and especially the supranational institutions, are guarantors of the attempts that we citizens make to respond to our needs – they are guarantors, not masters – and they are such because they are well aware that they cannot be the final answer to people’s heartfelt desires. The reference to Europe’s Christian roots merely shows that today’s Europe realises that, without its bond with the uniting and personalistic tension of Christianity, it will always be weaker, more exposed to the political short cuts of totalitarian regimes. To be able to reject humanity to the utmost, such regimes have always preferred to begin by rejecting God, though for less explicit reasons than the politically correct of today."@en1

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