Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-31-Speech-3-034"
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"en.20060531.9.3-034"2
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"Mr President, the presence here of the Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Verhofstadt, and the speech he made as part of this debate illustrate perfectly, in fact, everything that is fundamentally going wrong in the European Union, for indeed, the real problem in Europe and with Verhofstadt is that the so-called statesmen no longer display even the most elementary democratic reflexes, are no longer prepared to listen to the people and electorate and are, instead, convinced that they, in their ivory towers, know best.
In fact, we had another glowing example of this only a few minutes ago. Mr Verhofstadt is now urging his European colleagues to ignore the devastating results of the referendums in France and the Netherlands and continue to act as if nothing is wrong. Although Mr Verhofstadt is keen to get noticed as the champion of public involvement via referendums, he has not dared organise the promised referendum in his own country. Indeed, Mr Verhofstadt’s public involvement cannot be organised until he is certain of being right and not at any risk of losing.
This European democratic deficit is at its most obvious in the case of Turkey, which threatens to paralyse the entire European system. Europe has not run aground as a result of the outspoken, proper and well-founded distrust of the voting public in the Netherlands and in France, but rather because of the reasons that underpin it. Europe is stuck because eminent European statesmen refuse to define the territory of the European Union, refuse to restrict the potential accession of new candidate countries to countries that belong to Europe culturally, geographically and historically, which obviously does not include Turkey.
In fact, Prime Minister Verhofstadt himself is one of the outspoken champions of this Turkish accession and refuses any referendum or democratic input on that subject.
A month ago, that other ivory-tower sage, Mr Barroso, the President of the Commission, said that he could see no reason why a debate about the European boundaries should be held, on the grounds that such a debate could not lead anywhere. As it happens, the opposite is true. Only when the European citizens are reassured that Europe has boundaries, only when they know that their Europe is restricted to countries that have a common basis, something that is essential to them, only when the European citizens discover that their statesmen are once again prepared to listen to their voices and prepared to respect the outcome of democratic referendums, only then, and not before, can European recovery set in.
I would like to repeat that in that sense, it was good and symbolic that it was none other than Mr Verhofstadt, the man who, in his own country, represents only 15% of the voters, that it was he who should come here to represent the eminent, pedantic eurocrats who are never prepared to listen, that is the role that was made for him."@en1
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