Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-20-Speech-3-061"
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"en.20080220.3.3-061"2
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"Mr President, this Treaty is not an elegant document. There are many ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’, because there is no other way for a diverse family of nations to share power. However, despite the naysayers, it responds to our citizens’ demands for more democracy and a greater capacity to do those things which nation states cannot do effectively on their own: peacekeeping, climate change, migration, financial and market regulation, and, indeed, labour regulation.
At this time of global instability, the European Union is more important than ever for small Member States like Ireland. Today’s vote will again show up the bizarre alliance of market fundamentalists, ultra-left and ultra-right, which opposes this Treaty. They have one thing in common: an urge to confine peoples’ democratic reach behind national borders. The multimillionaires – the Murdochs in Britain and the Ganleys in Ireland – cynically manipulate national chauvinism to seek to deny Europeans reaching beyond their national borders to regulate business in the wider interests of society.
The others, Sinn Féin and their allies, do not trust the citizens and their ability to create an accountable transnational democracy. Their stock-in-trade is fear, fear of our neighbours, of democratic parliaments, of governments and of globalisation. They fail to explain how more power for parliaments means less democracy. They masquerade as internationalists but they object to neighbours helping each other in times of crisis or attack. They refuse to countenance binding European laws to protect us and our neighbours from climate change, the abuse of workers’ rights and abuse of the market.
The weapons of those who pedal fear is the big lie, eloquently demonstrated here today by Ms McDonald and Ms Sinnott. They wearily turn truth on its head to claim that elected representatives of more than 80% of the people of Europe are about to crush democracy, are about to deny people ever again having a say in the construction of Europe. Before polling day in Ireland, all these big lies will have been shown up for what they are: the nightmares of parties which have learned nothing from their history and are bent on condemning the people of Europe to repeating it. I am confident that Ireland’s decision will be to stay at the heart of Europe."@en1
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