Jag gråter nu…
[Uppdaterad] Ni minns EMU-debatten? Dumheter om att en gemensam valuta inte hindrade Saddam Hussein att gasa ihjäl kurder (Ulla Hoffmann) och Maud Olofsson jämförde EMU med det tredje riket.
Nu är det diskussion om EU-konstitutionen, och in kommer Margot Wallström.
A senior European Commissioner marked VE Day yesterday by accusing Eurosceptics of risking a return to the Holocaust by clinging to ”nationalistic pride”.
Margot Wallstrom, a Swede and the commissioner who must sell the draft constitution to voters, argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s.
Mrs Wallstrom, vice-president of the commission for institutional relations and communications, was speaking in the former Jewish ghetto of Terezin in the Czech Republic.
She blamed the Second World War on ”nationalistic pride and greed, and … international rivalry for wealth and power”. The EU had replaced such rivalry with an historic agreement to share national sovereignty.
Her fellow commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the draft constitution for Europe.
The commissioners also gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of Nato and the United States.
Richard Shepherd, the Tory MP for Aldridge-Brownhills, said it was ”breathtaking” to link Nazism to the defence of national sovereignty.
”It’s a monstrous rewriting of history to promote a profoundly undemocratic project.”
Hollands premiärminister Jan Peter Balkenende gjorde samma sak.
Speaking at a US military ceremony in Margraten, southern Netherlands, he recalled the determination of European leaders after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 to unite to prevent a new war. They realised, he said, ”that cooperation was the best guarantee of lasting peace.”
”Time has proved them right,” he added, speaking just before Bush. ”European cooperation has brought us 60 years of peace, progress and security. The EU is about to take the next step: ratification of the European constitution,” he said.
Unashamedly puffing his cause, he went on to say: ”We believe in the words of the constitution, that ‘Europe, reunited after bitter experiences, intends to continue along the path of civilisation, progress and prosperity’”.
Wallströms tal finns här i doc-format. [Via Tim Worstall]
How could human being do this to other human beings?
And how, above all, could it happen here in Europe, the birthplace of Humanism and the Enlightenment?
Europe, the continent that so often presumed to preach morality to other continents?
”Love one another”. ”Do unto others what you would have others do unto you”.
The words of a wandering Jewish teacher 2000 years ago.
Europe hailed those words as divine but largely failed to put them into practice.
A failure that culminated in the horrors of the 1940s.
We also came to this terrible point in our history through nationalistic pride and greed, and through international rivalry for wealth and power. It was precisely to put an end to such rivalry that the European Union was born – the first ever supranational organisation in which sovereign nations voluntarily share their sovereignty.
European nations may well disagree over all kinds of issues – but instead of fighting we now sit round a table and discuss them until we reach an agreement. It means a lot of compromises, but it works!
Yet there are those today who want to scrap the supranational idea. They want the European Union to go back to the old purely inter-governmental way of doing things.
I say those people should come to Terezin and see where that old road leads.
