Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-22-Speech-4-134"
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"en.20091022.18.4-134"2
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"Mr President, the French philosopher René Descartes famously conjectured that all our senses might be being manipulated by a malicious demon.
Sometimes when I listen to these reports, I get the impression that we are inhabiting that Cartesian universe, a world in which the European Union stands only for the values of democracy and freedom and justice and extends its values through trade accords, rather than war. And then, back in the real world, what is the European Union doing? It is cosying up to the tyrants in Beijing and isolating Taiwan. It is refusing to talk to the anti-Castro dissidents in Cuba. It is trying to jolly the ayatollahs out of their nuclear ambitions. It is the chief paymaster of Hamas-controlled Palestine.
There is no connection between this report about spreading democracy and the actual behaviour of our institutions. I do not say that the European Union is hypocritical because, of course, we apply the same standards within our own borders, happily swatting aside referendum results when we deem them to have gone the wrong way. Externally, as well as domestically, we disdain representative government and we are contemptuous of the democratic will. Let me repeat that the Lisbon Treaty should be put to a referendum.
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