Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP, Co-President of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) Group
Transcript:
Good morning, Mr van Rompuy,And that's the spirit that Big Kev wants to bring to this hemisphere.
You've been in office for one year and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there's chaos, the money's running out - I should thank you; you should perhaps be the pin-up boy of the Eurosceptic movement.
But just look around this chamber, this morning. Just look at these faces. Look at the fear. Look at the anger. Poor old Barroso here looks like he's seen a ghost.
They're begining to understand that the game is up and yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it's pretty clear that none of you have learnt anything.
When you yourself, Mr van Rompuy, say that the euro has brought us stability. I suppose I could applaud you for having a sense of humour, but isn't this, really, just the bunker mentality?
Your fanaticism is out in the open. You talked about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in the 21st Century globalised world. Well, that may be true in the case of Belgium, who haven't had a government for six months, but for the rest of us, right across every member state in this Union - and perhaps this is why we see the fear in the faces - increasingly people are saying, 'We don't want that flag. We don't want the anthem. We don't want this political class. We want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history.'
And we had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year, and now we have this situation in Ireland. Now I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this. They should never ever have joined the euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom and a massive bust.
But look at your response to them. What they're being told, as their government is collapsing, is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact Commissioner Rehn here said they had to agree their budget first before they'd be allowed to have a general election.
Just who the hell do you think you people are?
You are very very dangerous people, indeed. Your obsession with creating this Euro state means that you're happy to destroy democracy. You appear to be happy for millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions must suffer so that your Euro dream can continue.
Well it won't work. Because it's Portugal next, with their debt levels of 325% of GDP, they're the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain. And the bailout for Spain would be seven times the size of Ireland's and at that moment all of the bailout money has gone - there won't be anymore.
But it is even more serious than economics. Because if you rob people of their identity. If you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.
Kevin Rudd, Address to the Asia Society AustralAsia Centre, 2008
The European Union of course does not represent an identikit model of what we would seek to develop in the Asia Pacific.File under: the game is up.
But what we can learn from Europe is this – it is necessary to take the first step.
In the 1950s, sceptics saw European integration as unrealistic.
But most people would now agree that the goal of the visionaries in Europe who sat down in the 1950s and resolved to build prosperity and a common sense of a security community has been achieved.
It is that spirit we need to capture in our hemisphere.
Our special challenge is that we face a region with greater diversity in political systems and economic structures, levels of development, religious beliefs, languages and cultures, than did our counterparts in Europe.
But that should not stop us from thinking big.
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