Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-07-Speech-2-107"
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"en.20100907.24.2-107"2
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"Mr President, I am sure you will remember the wonderful scene in the film of Dr Zhivago, where the bourgeoisie and the aristocrats are enjoying champagne in the warm golden light of a restaurant, while outside in the surrounding murk, the people riot. Listening to our debate this morning, I was reminded not for the first time of that cinematic moment.
We have just had a Eurobarometer poll showing that confidence in the EU is at an all-time low. A minority of EU citizens now believe that the European Union is beneficial. But we heard from Mr Verhofstadt, Mr Daul and others that this is because we are not doing enough, because they want Europe to be doing more. We heard from the President of the Commission that it was all the fault of the nation states. Well, I suppose it is human nature not to seek to blame yourself for your own unpopularity, but it would have been nice to have had some indication that this crisis might have to do with the euro, with the bail-outs, with the sheer inequity of the shoving around of public money with the high-handedness with which we dismiss election results.
Allow me to close with the words of Edmund Burke, which seem unusually apt to our present discontents: ‘Because half a dozen grasshoppers concealed beneath a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, while thousands of great cattle take their repose beneath the shadow of a tree and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make all the noise are the only inhabitants of the field’."@en1
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