Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-01-13-Speech-2-093"
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"en.20090113.21.2-093"2
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"− Mr President of the Republic of Latvia, the right honourable Valdis Zatlers, it is a very great pleasure for us all to be able to welcome you today on your first visit to the European Parliament. I should like to start by thanking you, as the President of a country which is still a relatively new Member State of the European Union, for accepting the European Parliament’s invitation to address us today, the day on which we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of our common currency, the euro. Today is a premiere in every sense of the word, as this was the first time that the European hymn has been played to welcome a guest to plenary here in the European Parliament.
Mr President, it gives me great pleasure to invite you now to address the European Parliament. May I warmly welcome you once again to the European Parliament.
May I take this opportunity to mention once again today the historic significance of the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. It took over 60 years to bring your country back into a free and democratic Europe and unify our continent.
We live today in peace, freedom and democracy. Our citizens enjoy prospects that our forefathers could only have dreamed of. We must and should rejoice in that.
It is true that today the European Union faces new and serious challenges. Even the people of Latvia have come to feel this quite clearly, for example as a result of the financial crisis, which has also hit your country hard, Mr President. The gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine is also giving the citizens of Latvia justified cause for concern.
It is precisely in times of crisis that we understand the value of membership of a European Union based on the principle of solidarity between its peoples. It is precisely in this time of crisis that we all feel the need for community and cooperation between our countries and the European institutions.
Together we are stronger, together we can defend our interests and values better throughout the world. That is also why the European Parliament hopes the Lisbon Treaty, which gives the European Union a stronger capacity to act to overcome these serious challenges, will shortly enter into force.
In this respect, the European Parliament elections due to take place in June this year are immensely important, because we want to push ahead with the success story of the European peace and unification project together, in a democratic European Union with a European Parliament with codecision powers in nearly every area.
I truly hope that the citizens of Latvia – and of all the other Member States of the European Union – will understand that their vote is important because it gives them European powers of codecision and in this sense will turn out in force during the forthcoming elections to the European Parliament."@en1
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