Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-26-Speech-1-069"
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"en.20050926.13.1-069"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen from Poland, it is more than merely symbolic that we should, today, not only be welcoming the observers from Bulgaria and Romania, but also remembering the great triumph of Solidarity 25 years ago. I am glad that the Commission has had something to say about the Solidarity movement today. One might think there were occasions of greater contemporary relevance and that the celebrations over the past weeks had paid sufficient tribute to history, but our debate today shows that the opposite is the case. When I joined in the celebrations in Warsaw and Gdansk three weeks ago, it was again brought home to me just how relevant to our own time this groundbreaking historic event actually is.
The legendary strike by Solidarity that we are commemorating is part of our living heritage, and has lost none of its significance in 25 years. It was the politically and socially oppressed and disadvantaged who, by their courage, succeeded in bringing to an end the totalitarian Communist regimes in Poland and, following on from that, in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe; their boundless desire for reform is on all our lips. Above all, though, we revere the memory of the victims of these totalitarian regimes, remembering those who were oppressed, arrested, shot dead during protest strikes, condemned and executed after show trials. One man – the priest, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, can be taken as representative of all of them.
The years 1953, 1956, and 1968 are significant in the histories of East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but Solidarity gave impetus and reinforcement to the civil rights movements in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Charta 77, which campaigned for traditional, political human rights, the ‘Swords into Ploughshares’ peace campaign in the former East Germany, and the ‘Dunakör’ environmentalist movement in Hungary. What all this adds up to is that, without Solidarity, the Berlin Wall would not have fallen.
I speak for this House when I say that debate mattered to those who supported the Solidarity movement in Poland – debate that involved our friends Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuroń, as well as Bronisław Geremek and Janusz Onyskiewicz, who are now Members of this House, and so we are very grateful to them for the way in which they, 25 years ago, laid the foundation stones of a Europe united in peace, freedom and democracy, a Europe guided by social and environmental principles."@en1
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