THE EUROPEAN Union is not immortal, the president of the European Parliament warned yesterday in his final speech before the house in Strasbourg.
Jerzy Buzek, whose two-and-a-half-year term will come to an end when his successor is elected on January 17th, told MEPs that “we have not prepared our community for difficult and more challenging times” that lie ahead following the spread of the international financial crisis.
Mr Buzek, a Pole, began his farewell speech by quoting Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who asked: “If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to endure for ever?”
He challenged Europe’s politicians to continue to fight for European solidarity nonetheless and to overcome the financial crisis, but warned that this would need commitment and unity.
“Arguments about self-interest began to erode our belief in the common good. And now our union has moved into a deep crisis whose causes are as much political and psychological as economic,” he said.
The European ideal was worth struggling for, he added, saying that Europe “was built on dreams and we have no right to throw those dreams away”.
In highlighting positives from his term, Mr Buzek singled out the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which he maintained had made the European Parliament the co-legislative body that it had always wanted to be.
He went on to express the hope that despite the friction caused at this month’s summit in Brussels where the United Kingdom walked out of negotiations, the euro crisis would “lead to more, not less, use of the Lisbon Treaty and the community method”.
At a time where no “country is an island”, he said, he “who stays outside cannot expect to be a main player ... our real problem is the lack of mutual trust and the loss of a sense of meaning”.
Addressing the issue of the Arab Spring, Mr Buzek said that for too long Europe had ignored its neighbours to the south and east.
“For many years we looked for stability, not being seriously engaged in defending human rights and building democracy in our neighbourhood.”
Mr Buzek praised Europe’s growing role in this area, saying that when he spoke to protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo they told him “Thank you, Europe”.