Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-02-Speech-3-086"
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"en.20000202.6.3-086"2
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"Mr President, I am in the happy position of being able to refer to a couple of striking contributions from a small group of Nordic sceptics and opponents of the drastic and growing integration process which, looked long and hard at, threatens the whole of democratic Europe. I am thinking of the contributions from Mr Bonde and Mr Sjöstedt who point out that the present contribution contains a string of relatively unconscious but undoubtedly rational initiatives dictated by the desire for power and pointing in the direction of a centralist and federalist EU. They rightly included the problem with monetary union and centralist government and presented a number of alternative democratic principles. I might add that all rational political campaigning in my own country, Denmark, takes it for granted that, when we enlarge the circle of EU countries to include the envisaged huge number of new Member States and when we in that way extend the breadth of the Union, we cannot at the same time pursue further integration in depth, that is to say engage in a more intensive qualitative integration towards a United States of Europe. However, that is precisely what is happening. With every single geographical extension to the area covered by the EU, we have seen how extensions in breadth have been followed by intensive extensions in depth, and that is precisely what the draft resolution from the Committee is contemplating, especially in paragraph 7 which says that there should be more thorough integration in depth. In the light of developments in recent days, it might well be asked what we really are to do about these intergovernmental conferences and treaty amendments when government leaders – in reality the European Council of Ministers – make decisions in relation to an independent Member State entailing intervention in that Member State’s democratic process. You can think what you like about Mr Haider, and I personally consider him to be a very dangerous politician, but you cannot just intervene in an independent and friendly country’s democratic process. When we hold intergovernmental conferences and consider changes to the Treaty, we must take into account the fact that the EU is developing all the time, sometimes in contravention of the Treaty, as we have just seen."@en1
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