Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-31-Speech-3-031"
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"en.20060531.9.3-031"2
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".
Mr President, to call this a debate about the future of Europe is frankly farcical. What we have here is rather the self-serving political elite talking amongst themselves. They could not be epitomised better than by a person like Mr Verhofstadt.
I must say I find it a bit rich for the Prime Minister of Belgium to come along here and tell 24 other nation states what they should do. I say that because perhaps he ought to look a bit more in his own back yard. The most recent opinion poll in Belgium – or should I say in Flanders – shows that 51% of people there favour independence from the Belgian state. The Vlaams Belang is now the biggest political party in Flanders. Is it, Mr Verhofstadt, because you are so embarrassed and ashamed that your own country is falling to pieces, that you come along here to encourage the rest of us to self-destruct as well? I am not sure.
I suppose there was at least a certain honesty about your speech, because you are an unashamed Euro-nationalist. You could not give a damn what ordinary people think. You could not give a damn about the referendum results in France and in the Netherlands last year. You said yourself today – in that most incredibly arrogant speech – that the whole process of political integration will continue regardless of what the people say. What you are doing is threatening the very basis of national self-determination and democracy. In the last century, this principle was thought to be so important that if you look in your own back yard, you will see the graves of many British soldiers who went to defend that very principle, on which you now seem to have turned your back.
It was clear last year! What is it about you, Mr Verhofstadt? What part of the word ‘no’ do you not understand?"@en1
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