Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-16-Speech-3-123-000"
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"en.20111116.18.3-123-000"2
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"Mr President, whenever there is a German general election British newspapers always run the same photograph, which is of Germans voting in traditional national costume – Bavarians in their leather shorts, and North German ladies in these fantastic dresses.
It seems to me that those photographs are now the perfect symbol of European democracy. Voting has become a folkloric activity. Our constituents go through the motions out of atavism, out of some half-remembered civic duty from the time when it used to matter, rather than in the expectation that casting their ballot will make any difference.
And do you know what? They are right to think that. According to a study by the German Federal Justice Ministry, 84% of the laws in the Member States are there to give force to EU Directives or Regulations. The split is no longer between Left and Right, between capitalists and socialists; it is between the ‘euro elites’ and everybody else.
How sad that this Continent, which developed and exported the idea that laws ought not to be passed nor taxes raised except by our elected representatives, should have turned its back on democracy itself.
The thing that now deserves a heritage label is the ideal of representative government in Europe."@en1
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