Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-09-Speech-3-314"
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"en.20080709.32.3-314"2
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"Mr President, there is a famous painting by the Belgian artist René Magritte which shows a pipe with, below it, the caption ‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’. Magnificently painted it may be, but this pipe can never be smoked.
The Brok report is rather like this. Despite its title, it is not an enlargement strategy, for it is not a matter of strategy or of those key questions that citizens ask themselves. Why enlarge the European Union? In what direction? At what risk or with what benefits? What Mr Brok is talking about is a consolidation method, a defensive tactic. To put it simply, enlargement is a contract between Europe and the candidate countries. The latter have to fulfil the Copenhagen criteria, and Europe has to demonstrate the capacity to absorb them.
And there is the rub. Trapped in a Treaty of Nice that is too constricting, from which it cannot escape, Europe is not ready for further enlargement. Accordingly, the crisis in the European institutions should have the effect of putting a stop to enlargement. That is what many European citizens think and, up to a point, that is my view too.
We need to be careful though, as, put baldly like this, devoid of any ambitious strategy, this slogan is dangerous. It opens up the way to all those who are prepared to reject a new treaty, with a view to turning in on ourselves, to rejecting Turkey or even the Balkan countries – the way to all those nationalists who distrust foreigners who might one day dress up as Europeans. For them, this slogan is just a charade – in fact they want neither enlargement nor greater depth.
We have to prove to our citizens that the successive enlargements have constituted an opportunity for Europe, to emphasise to them that multiculturalism is a blessing, that immigration is our democratic future. We have to get beyond the institutional crisis. It does not signal a victory either for the Eurosceptics or for the left, but it reveals a somewhat inglorious impotence from which everyone risks suffering. The Brok report manages this impotence well and intelligently, and I congratulate him, but sadly he does not take us forward."@en1
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