Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-08-Speech-3-021"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
dcterms:Language
lpv:document identification number
"en.20050608.3.3-021"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:spokenAs
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, the die is cast. The European Constitution is still-born. Just one vote against sufficed. There have been two votes, only three days apart, in France and in Holland, two of the six countries that were founder-members of the European Union. Tomorrow, it will be Great Britain, whose currency is not the euro, that will take over the Presidency of the Council, and it has already announced that it sees the process of ratification as useless. Never has the gap between parliaments and the people seemed so wide. Eight per cent of the members of the French Parliament voted no, but 55% of the people did so. It is, therefore, perhaps surprising that popular referendum is not the only means of ratification in all the countries of the European Union, seeing as it is the most democratic means which, in particular, those who complain in this House about the democratic deficit of the institutions might be expected to champion. It is true that it is dangerous for princes who govern for their own profit to give a voice to the people, who suffer to their detriment. It is against oligarchies – in politics, in the media, in the economy, in social affairs and elsewhere – which had far more powerful means at their disposal in the debate, that the people have spoken, refusing to give up their independence within a supranational state that, at one and the same time, showed itself to be ultraliberal, bureaucratic, economically mediocre and socially disastrous. They said no to indefinite enlargement, beyond Europe, to Turkey. Some will perhaps be tempted to get round the French and Dutch no votes. They should beware lest they provoke the legitimate wrath of the citizens. It would be wiser to take into account, and to consider, the will of the people and to endeavour to give the desirable aim of European cooperation a more realistic structure. It is clear that people do not want to give up their national structures. They are the bases of their identity, the defenders of their higher interests and the guarantees of their liberty, their cultures and their languages. They want to retain their sovereignty, over their territory and their boundaries, and to forge their own destiny and that of their children, given the threat posed nowadays by globalisation, immigration, social collapse and moral decadence."@en1

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz
3http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/spokenAs.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph