Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-13-Speech-3-052"
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Mr President, I will be very brief because I have taken note of the remarks and advice addressed to me and it does not seem to me that it is necessary to give an analytical response now. I have noted and digested what you have all said on industrial development, on the need for an economic upturn in Europe and on the fact that the rules which apply to industry ought not to act as a brake on this development. The same applies to the suggestions concerning energy, the environment and the progress to be made.
Instead, I would like to conclude simply with a remark and with my thanks. The remark is this: all your speeches – even those that contained criticisms or particular points of view – at bottom were conscious of the fact that the European model has a special character and that we have given the world a lesson in how to achieve progress using a method which is not only the traditional one of power politics, and to do so without being under any illusions, without believing that we are something we are not and without believing that the world is other than it is.
The priority that we give to multilateralism, our way of seeing the world as a single whole, for the first time ever in so many different realms – that of the environment, the economy, energy – and therefore trying to find working methods that are suited to this view: this is the extraordinary contribution that Europe is striving to give to the globalised world.
I have quite rightly heard criticism with regard to globalisation: but globalisation exists and is increasing. The problem is to interpret it, and only the European method has done this so far. Why? Because we have given an example through the way in which we are uniting together and now, at the end of my mandate, I would like to repeat the true, unique, great definition of Europe, which I learnt when I went to the Romanian parliament for the first talks in the negotiations. On that occasion I was told: ‘We want to join Europe because Europe is a union of minorities; it is a union in which no one is the arbiter of the others, no one has power over the others’. We are, truly, small and large countries gathered in this great, difficult balancing act, and this is a lesson for the world, a great lesson that we are giving.
Then there are obviously also failures, individual aspects, the difficulties inherent in translating these aspirations and feelings into everyday policy. It is an effort, however, that is being increasingly understood. In recent weeks I went to the countries of the Caucasus and saw the national flag flying next to the European flag, for no reason at all, if not for that feeling of being safe next to a great structure that has no colonial desires, no desires for domination or desires for supremacy: this is the lesson that we can give to the world.
This is what we have tried to do in the Commission, within limits and with shortcomings, naturally, but with an enormous sense of harmony. In this Commission you have never perceived disputes or tensions; we have never acted spitefully towards each other. Perhaps we too have been influenced by that European spirit of being a union of minorities in the Commission itself, and thus absorbing this lesson which, in my opinion, is the greatest legacy that we can give to all the world’s citizens.
I would like to end with thanks for your cooperation, for your comprehension, and also for having tolerated some excesses and some choices with which you have not agreed, but whose spirit you have perhaps understood: in truth, if we do not have a strong and politically robust Parliament and a strong and politically robust Commission in the future, it will be difficult for us to achieve our objectives, objectives which – as I can see – we truly all share."@en1
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