Speech by HE Nicole Fontaine, President of the European Parliament - ‘The future of Europe’, at the University of Malta, 20 November 2001

A Europe of peace

A Europe of economic freedom founded on solidarity

• The common agricultural policy has saved the human fabric of the rural world and the European farming industry from a devastating decline which seemed inevitable;

• The single market has made the European Union the world’s largest economic centre, one which is fully open to fair, stimulating competition and which is better able to cope with the disruption caused by problems affecting the other major economies;
• The mutual recognition of professional qualifications and freedom of establishment for all professions, albeit regulated at national level, will enable coming generations to think in terms of Europe as a whole, rather than simply their home countries, when planning their studies and their private and working lives;
• The Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund have enabled those countries or regions which are handicapped by their geographical situation or which are underdeveloped to achieve a level of economic activity which would otherwise have been out of reach. However, this approach based on solidarity, which has generated economic booms in, for example, Spain, Ireland and Greece, has also ultimately benefited the countries which provided the aid by opening up new markets for their products;
• Finally, the euro has done away with the destabilising impact of fluctuations in the value of European currencies and has forced all our Member States to achieve a much greater degree of convergence in their policies in the areas of the budget deficit, public debt and inflation.

A Europe founded on shared values

In the European Union, what we have already created, and what we intend to build on with the countries seeking to join us, is also a Europe founded on shared values.

Many of those values have been engraved on our collective consciousness by more than one thousand years of shared history.

We have enshrined those values in the Treaties of Rome, Maastricht and Amsterdam and in the very substantial case law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities.

The re-emergence of barbarism in Bosnia, and subsequently in Kosovo, forced Europeans to consider once again forms of behaviour which could not be tolerated, in particular on the soil of Europe itself. It is today significant thatthe degrading treatment of women by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan is providing similar food for thought for European public opinion.

The first World Congress on the Universal Abolition of the Death Penalty, held at the European Parliament in June 2001, demonstrated that a united Europe is increasingly taking on a role as a moral authority, alongside its status as an economic power. It gathered the Presidents of national parliaments, and your President, Prof de Marco gave us the important honour of his attendance.

In December 2000 we sought to highlight these shared views by proclaiming, in Nice, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

That document is clearly destined to form the preamble to a constitution of the European Union which we need:

- in order to undo the tangle of Treaties and make them accessible to the public;

- in order to clarify the distribution of responsibilities, on the basis of the subsidiarity principle, between Europe, the Member States and regional and local authorities;

- in order to acknowledge, without creating institutional confusion, the role played by the national parliaments, the primary depositories of national sovereignty.

A social Europe

A common area of security, freedom and justice

Everybody is aware of the need for

- our respective national laws to be made compatible,

- the principle of the mutual recognition of	powers and court decisions to be established through the introduction of a European arrest warrant,
- a common policy, one which is both generous and	rigorous, to be adopted in the sphere of immigration to help the fight against those who exploit clandestineimmigration.

A Europe founded on common defence

In the European Union, what we have already started to create, and what we intend to build on with the countries seeking to join us, is a Europe founded on common defence, so that Europe can take greater responsibility for its own security and intervene outside Europe if world peace is threatened or if fundamental human rights are violated, as recently in the Balkans and as now in Afghanistan.

A political Europe

A Europe founded on universal solidarity

A people's Europe

Unification of the continent of Europe

With the new Treaty signed in Nice, the European Union firmly committed itself to uniting within the Union all the States and peoples of the continent wishing to take part in such a process, with a view to consolidating peace and democracy irreversibly within the European Union.

This process is, in fact, called enlargement, but that word fails fully to reflect a nobler and more compelling ambition.

With the adhesion of at least 10 countries in 2004 including your own, the European Union will have a population of close to half a billion men and women living and working in a huge economic area with no internal borders, stretching from the Arctic circle to Gibraltar, Malta and the Ionian Islands, and from Ireland to the Russian border.

It will be no easy task to form a genuine community from all these countries and all these peoples, whose ethnic, historical, social and religious backgrounds are so strong and so firmly rooted. We must not underestimate the difficulties involved, and universities such as yours can play an extremely positive role in this respect, in accordance with their original mission.

This is because what we need to do is not just to make the necessary adjustments to the European institutions but also to change mindsets in the existing Member States and in the applicant countries.

It must be said that after an initial period of spontaneous public support for integration, concerns are now growing in all our countries, leading some of us to draw back in on ourselves. This is why we must lose no time in launching an information campaign to raise awareness of the geo-political issues involved in fully reunifying within the European Union all those European countries willing and able to do so.

The final aim is to reunite an entire continent in a Community of States and peoples whose goal is to make Europe an area of irreversible peace and democracy and, through a deliberate pooling of national sovereignties, to enable it to have more influence on the world stage and, through economic solidarity, to foster better living standards, equally shared among all those living and working in Europe.

A new Intergovernmental Conference has been scheduled for 2004. The European Parliament is keen to ensure that the preparations for this conference are a success and, with this in mind, that a broad public debate takes place. This debate must be open to all sections of civil society, in close cooperation with national parliaments and regional assemblies, and with the involvement of the applicant countries. Our meeting here today is part of this process.

Here in Malta, I am well aware of the fact that questions will be asked during the preparations for such a major decision. This is entirely normal. However, I would hope - and this is the main message I would like to put across here - that all opinion formers help the population to see accession to the European Union as an exciting project which goes far beyond economic integration and whose import for future generations transcends today's partisan divisions. You should not be worried that your country, which in terms of its population is a "small" country which would account for only one hundredth of the overall population of the enlarged Union, would be swamped. The uniqueness of the European Union has been to unite states in a single community where they are all treated equally, regardless of their size, and where their traditions and special cultural characteristic are respected. Luxembourg, which has a smaller population than Malta, is a founding member of the Union whose identity and national sovereignty have been in no way undermined by its membership. It has more influence within the Union than if it stood on its own, precisely because it is a member of a larger body. The main fault line has not been between the "big" and the "small" but between those who want an integrated Europe and those who do not share this conception. In today's world, one can only be strong if one forms part of a team. Concerning Malta, I firmly believe that balanced agreements will be reached on the issues still under negotiation - the free movement of capital, competition, fisheries, and the environment which repsect the special needs of Malta. We have already come most of the way, and this stands us in good stead for the rest of the journey.

This is the sincere and open message which I wished to put across to you today in a spirit of true friendship.

Thank you.