Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-07-06-Speech-2-141"
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"en.20100706.24.2-141"2
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"Mr President, you are too kind, and what a pleasure it is to see you in the presidential chair.
Mr President, which are the richest countries in Europe, or rather, the countries with the wealthiest citizens in Europe? I was looking at the OECD data the other day and in 2008, which is the latest year for which we have figures, the countries that are most prosperous are the members of the European Free Trade Association – despite everything they have gone through! Despite a banking crisis that disproportionately impacted Switzerland and Iceland, income per head in the EEA countries is 214% of what it is in the European Union. These guys in EFTA are twice as rich as the citizens of the EU Member States!
Why is that? Let me suggest that it might have something to do with the deal that they have struck with the European Union, whereby they are in the free market, in the four freedoms – free movement of goods and services and people and capital – but they are outside the common fisheries policy and outside the common agricultural policy, they control their own borders and determine who can cross them, they settle their own human rights issues, they control their own energy reserves and they can buy and sell to third countries without being subject to the common external tariff.
Could not our country, the United Kingdom, achieve something at least as good as what seven million Swiss and four million Norwegians have achieved? We are a nation of 60 million, a trading, enterprising nation, a nation whose colonising energies have touched every continent. Surely we could do just as well running our own affairs in our own interest?"@en1
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