Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-26-Speech-3-149"
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"en.20051026.17.3-149"2
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".
Mr Blair, when you outlined your vision for the UK Presidency back in June, you challenged Europe’s leadership to get its policies right for today’s world: to reconnect Europe to its citizens, its citizens to the demands of a global marketplace, and its politicians to Europe’s priorities. Yet, six months on, as your reception here has demonstrated, many cannot, or will not, think beyond the terms of Liberal Europe versus Social Europe.
Your difficulty, I suspect, is that some Member States doubt Britain’s solidarity. They see the UK like that explorer in the jungle who, when the band of explorers froze at the sight of a tiger ready to pounce on them, slowly took off his jungle boots and slipped on a pair of running shoes. To the colleague who whispered, ‘you must be mad, you’ll never outrun a tiger!’ he replied, ‘my friends, it’s not the tiger I have to outrun.’
If Britain were in the euro and fully in Schengen to show solidarity, its authority and influence would be greater.
Let me be clear. Over 90 % of the eurozone’s GDP is from countries whose social costs are too high. This poses a danger to our economic future. Yesterday’s solutions are no longer an option.
It is time to realise that globalisation is not for tomorrow but today. It harbingers huge opportunities for wealth creation and intercultural exchange, but also cross-border challenges like migration, climate change and internationally organised crime. It challenges our social welfare state, and the German model, which seemed to work 20 years ago, no longer does. As my German friends tell me, it is
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If the European Union is to prosper in a global community, we must combine reform of expensive social models with a new determination to build a single market for goods, services, capital and labour. With more invested in research, innovation and education, the single market delivers the wealth which pays for our social policy. It is not an economic and social Shangri-La, sheltered from all the pressures of the world, but it caters for a common response to a common challenge.
Let us go on to build the common policies in energy and home affairs of which you speak. The United Kingdom opposed these in the European Convention, and we welcome your change of heart. Many on the Left, particularly in this Chamber, perceive reform of welfare systems and market-opening as threats. But, as my colleague Bernard Lehideux pointed out last week, a free market economy and social solidarity can go hand in hand. Indeed, if economic Liberalism is complemented by Social Liberalism, we can offer our citizens the security, prosperity and opportunity they expect.
It is neither the American way nor the Gallic way. It is, perhaps, the Third Way, which Social Democrats seek but have not found. Because, as Richard Crossman warned you years ago, the problem with too many on the Left is not that they lack ideological maps for the new territory they are crossing, it is that their leaders believe that experienced travellers no longer need such maps.
President-in-Office, I do not envy your task at Hampton Court. But do not give up. The European Union is not only capable of reform: it yearns for reform. What it needs from the Presidency is leadership. Leadership must consist of more than the occasional good speech, as the British Conservatives may soon come ruefully to reflect.
The time has come to lead from the front. The success or otherwise of the UK Presidency will only be fully assessed in December. You must convince the doubters that under your leadership Europe can live up to the high expectations you set for us.
That means high ideals. What are your ideals for Europe, Mr Blair? Abandoning ideology and trusting focus groups to get a government re-elected is not leadership. It is followership. Ideology gives us the moral fibre to take difficult decisions at home and stand up to thugs on issues of human rights abroad, giving us a foreign policy we can be proud of, not ashamed of; making us proud to be Europeans."@en1
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