Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-130"
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"en.20050511.16.3-130"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the European Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, in 1945 – 60 years ago – Europe was a ruined battlefield. A barbaric war had claimed the lives of over 55 million people, millions more – untold millions – were uprooted, millions were made refugees or driven away from their homes; parents lost sons, wives lost husbands, children lost fathers. By the end of March 1945, my own father, a private in the Army, was missing. It was only a very long time later that we learned that he was among the dead. I never saw him.
The peoples of Western Europe had done valuable, indispensable, work in preparation for that day, and what they did will last. The establishment of the European Union with common values centred upon human dignity, the supranational union in a free community with its own binding laws were the consequent response to the opportunity presented by the end of the war. European unification is a project of peace and freedom.
All Europeans now have the chance, and the duty, to go down the road presented by a reunited Europe. We are now, together, engaged in building a Europe that defends its values for the sake of all its citizens. Europe can now give one single response to warfare and totalitarianism, by pressing on along the road of the one European Union of peoples and states, with perseverance, inner conviction and an acceptance of the diversity that is Europe’s strength and splendour. The current debate on the European Constitution is a great opportunity for us to remind ourselves of these fundamental things, because, for the first time in European history, our values and ideals are set down in a constitution.
Europa is not merely a political construction, but an intellectual living space. It is for that reason that the response to the terrible war, whose end we today commemorate with gratitude, had to be a moral one, a ‘never again’ to the unfreedom that leads to war, a ‘never again’ to the war that robs men of their freedom. That sums up the motivation behind building a new Europe, a Europe that repudiates totalitarianism, nationalist arrogance, and egalitarian inhumanity, a Europe that refuses to allow any one of its state to dominate the others, a Europe that affirms the unmistakeable dignity of every individual human being, the balancing of the interests of social groups and peoples, a Europe of respect and diversity, from which diversity, indeed, it derives its strength, a Europe of democracy and law.
A great deal of progress has been made in terms of internal reconciliation – reconciling the peoples and states of Europe with one another. We want – as we must – to complete this work of internal reconciliation, as we also wish to be reconciled with the people of Russia and the peoples in the Russian Federation. In the period of our history that is now beginning, Europe, though, will have to seek reconciliation in the world and with the world around us to a greater extent than ever before. Europe’s wars became world wars. Europe’s unification must benefit the world. We can be grateful to the Members of this House – and I wish to thank my colleague Elmar Brok in particular – who have drafted a resolution that will, tomorrow, express our values.
In this hour, we remember all the victims of the Second World War, and all the suffering and destruction. We recall how much peace and freedom belong together and the need for our work to serve mankind, not least in promoting dialogue between cultures.
Where this dialogue with the world bears fruit, we will defend the values that sustain us on our way into the future. It is thus that this day of remembrance can give us a new mission, bidding us work together to build a better world – a world more at peace, and a freer world.
In 1945, many of Europe’s cities were laid waste; its economy was in ruins. In the world at large, the mention of the name of Europe brought fear and dread. Where responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War lay is not a matter of doubt: the illicit National Socialist regime in Germany whipped up its racial delusions and claims to power into an inferno of aggression against all the other peoples of Europe. The attempted extermination of the Jews was to be the worst of its crimes. National Socialist totalitarianism led the whole of Europe into ruination. When the end came in 1945, the German people themselves were among its victims, at a time when victors were thin on the ground.
Instead of victors, there were survivors, some fortunate, some unfortunate; the former in the West, the latter in Central and Eastern Europe. Far-sighted American support made it possible for new life to resume in the west of the continent, enjoying freedom, respect for human dignity, democracy and a market economy founded upon the law. It was Winston Churchill, as we have just been reminded, who sketched out the vision of a United States of Europe – and let me add that Europe could never be complete without Great Britain. After 1945, starting with its Atlantic coast, Europe was resurrected; its peoples, exhausted but rejoicing that they could start again in freedom, drew together. Robert Schuman will always be remembered and honoured for reaching out to the Germans and inviting them to join in this new beginning. Without French magnanimity, Europe would again have remained no more than an insubstantial idea – and let me add that, now that the European Union is making another new beginning with a single constitution, Europe in future, too, will need France, more than ever, to be constructively involved.
In 1945 the peoples of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, too, were filled with the hope of a new beginning, of having, as those who belonged to the same European culture in which we all share, a new chance of life in freedom and peace. They had to learn from bitter experience that peace without freedom amounts to only partial liberation from the yoke of totalitarian injustice. Their hopes were crushed by the Soviet seizure of power. Although National Socialist totalitarianism was vanquished in 1945, Stalinist totalitarianism divided Europe and imposed its unjust rule on the peoples of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Hope, though, did not desert the less happy survivors of the Second World War – the hope of a shared Europe, intellectually, morally and politically renewed, with the prospect of prosperity for all its citizens. To this hope they eventually gave shape in a peaceful revolution, the watchword for which was
. It would take decades for the wall to be broken down.
Having been a member of this House ever since the first direct elections to it in 1979, I see our debate today – a debate that we are holding together in a dignified fashion, and with the gravity it deserves – as a time to rejoice that Europe is now united, a time of rejoicing, too, in the presence among us of Members from eight Central European countries, who enjoy the same rights as we do.
It was in 1989 that the double burden of totalitarianism was lifted from Europe. What 1989 taught us was what power Europe’s values have for all of us and how much, if we want to retain our freedom, we rely upon the example of courageous men and women. After 1989, Europe could again begin to breathe with both lungs, to quote the words used by that great Pope of immortal memory, John Paul II."@en1
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