Brussels, 23/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - Europe would not be able to deal with the sovereign debt crisis if it were not guided by heads of state, and it can only win back popular support if it protects people from the negative consequences of globalisation, argued the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on the presidential election campaign trail on Thursday 22 March 2012 in Strasbourg. He said the crisis had turned Europe upside down, but Europe had needed it, and no other European institution would have been able to deal with the crisis in the place of the Council of heads of state. He said that to get ideas moving, the only lever available to France is Europe, and for Europe to become a lever of change, Europe itself has to change, meaning that it must return to its basic values and be able to protect people. Europe cannot be the only political body in the world that pretends it doesn't have borders, that refuses to control immigration, that has no credible trade policy, that opens up its public procurement markets without expecting anything in return and that implements a competition policy that leaves its companies at the mercy of all the world's predators, added Sarkozy. He said Europe should stop importing farm goods from countries that flout the rules that apply to farmers in the EU (environmental standards and traceability).
The French president said there were three levels of European integration - Europe of the euro, which needs greater integration; Europe of the Schengen Area, where the same needs to be done as has been done for the eurozone, namely convergence of foreigners' rights and immigration policies and the introduction of a stable government and presidency; and the 27 member states (soon to be 28 and rising), which can be more flexible. The focus of this 3D Europe, he said, was starting to form a hard core where convergence is the rule because one cannot have different policies when one has a single currency. France and Germany form the centre of the hard core, he added, seeing the convergence of the French and German models as the emergence of a pole of stability in Europe. (MB/transl.fl)