Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-07-11-Speech-3-022"
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"en.20070711.4.3-022"2
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".
Mr President, may I take this opportunity once again to express our gratitude for the magnificent reception that yourself and your government reserved for the chairmen of the parliamentary groups very recently in Lisbon: it testifies to your will to work seriously with this Parliament.
We can only approve a number of your objectives, the ambition of which does not surprise us. They include that of helping to resolve the problems in Africa, problems that we must indeed admit have only worsened since the countries of Europe left, unlike what some people would have us believe. They also include an effort aimed at Latin America, and in particular Brazil, which is dear to your heart and which is close to you – all that is justifiable. As I have already had the opportunity to say to you, I believe that the only way that the European international policy that you hope to develop will have any legitimacy and transparency is if it distinguishes itself from that of the hegemonic superpower that the United States has now become.
I fear, Mr President, that my fellow Member, Mr Watson, and many others like him are confusing two things: on the one hand, the necessary restoration of economic freedoms within a nation or within an area of which the parameters are almost the same in social protection terms and, on the other, a form of unbridled free-marketism that is reflected in downright unfair competition founded on social dumping. The truth is that, in the beginning, an economy develops only within a protective framework, which is true for the major partners of the world market that, today, are Japan and China.
With regard, lastly, to the Intergovernmental Conference, you are going to have to apply a road map that has been proposed to you and that is a veritable manual with which to deceive the electorate. We are, in effect, keeping the substance of a constitution that, as has just been said, has been rejected, and changing the vocabulary. True, we are doing away with the words ‘constitution’, ‘foreign affairs minister’ and ‘framework law’, we are not mentioning the Charter in the text and we are merely publishing it in the Official Journal. However, we are keeping the extension of the Union’s powers, majority voting and a single presidency, which would deprive us of your presence today, if it were in force. We are keeping everything to which the people did not subscribe and which they would most probably reject if they were properly informed.
Mr President, you are the representative of a nation that is small in size but so very glorious in terms of its immense history. Such glory was possible only thanks to the constant battle that Portugal has always fought – from its birth and throughout its history – to uphold its independence. I beg you: do not be a party to the disappearance of this most precious of assets of your nation and of all our nations – our national independence."@en1
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