Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-28-Speech-3-069"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070328.12.3-069"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, President of the Commission, we, the citizens of Europe who have come from behind the ‘iron curtain’, set the greatest value in freedom, including the free market, and what was once our national product or, if you like, our regional speciality, namely solidarity. We also know the price of defending these values. For decades we dreamed of returning to the European homeland of free nations. We grew up listening to banned radio programmes, broadcast from Munich, with the proud name of ‘Radio Free Europe’.
Now we are still true to that Europe, free and united. As members of the European Union we have the full right to contribute to moulding its future. It is no longer enough to have the words ‘Europe, Europe’ on our lips, but we also have to ask ‘Europe yes, but what kind of Europe?’ Europe should be a project enjoying the full confidence of all of its members. There cannot be any taboo subjects in the European debate.
The Constitutional Treaty, which the French and the Dutch rejected, is open to analysis by each country, which has the right to question those aspects it regards as controversial.
However, we should not be in a situation where Mr Schulz, the leader of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, takes every opportunity to marginalise those Member States that dare to differ from his view of the future institutional shape of the European Union, or which differs from the political correctness that the Left is trying to impose. The debate on the treaty proposed by the German presidency should be dominated by openness and a willingness to compromise, even on such difficult issues as looking for a new and fair way of voting in the Council.
I also noticed that the Berlin Declaration lacked any reference to our Christian roots.
Finally, I would like to quote the Belgian politician Paul-Henri Spaak, in whose building we are today, and who in 1957 said:
As I once said in Strasbourg, when the present times have passed, when we will all have been gone for many years and when men seek to recount the human adventure that we lived, they will – irrespective of our religious or philosophical convictions – be unable to say more than that the people of those times, of that century, lived together the immense adventure of Christian civilisation."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples