Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-07-08-Speech-4-228"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20100708.17.4-228"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, from the earliest days of the Treaties of Paris and Rome, the European project has elevated the goal of supranationalism over that of freedom or democracy and, in fairness, it is exporting its ideology. We are effectively maintaining a protectorate in Kosovo, as we do in Bosnia, for the sole purpose of artificially holding together a multi-ethnic state.
I was an early supporter of Kosovan independence. It seemed to me a very clear case, where more than 90%of people had voted in a referendum for self-government, that they should be granted it. But we surely ought to extend that principle to national minorities within that territory and to aim at ethnographic frontiers – in other words to allow the Serbian population, conveniently clustered close to Serbia proper, to do de jure what they are doing de facto and have government from the hands of their own countrymen.
There is a conflict between supranationalism and democracy. You can hold a multi-ethnic state together – as the Yugoslav Federation was and also the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Empire and the Soviet Union – but as soon as you give people the vote, they opt for democratic self-determination. We should recognise it."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples