Brussels, 08/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died on Monday 8 April at the age of 87 following a stroke. Nicknamed the “Iron Lady”, Thatcher remodelled the United Kingdom according to a policy of intransigent economic liberalism.
The current prime minister of Britain, David Cameron, who was to begin a three-day tour of the European capitals on Monday to seek to explain to his partners why renegotiation of the terms of British participation in the European Union was justified, has had to cancel his plans and return home to attend the events paying tribute to Margaret Thatcher. He was in Madrid when he heard the news and has had to defer his meeting with French President François Hollande. Cameron was to be in Germany on Friday. As he sees it, the eurozone crisis makes it inevitable to carry out deep changes in the way the European institutions work, and means that reform of the treaties is also necessary. The British prime minister is currently in a tricky political situation as the Conservatives are lagging behind in the polls as the country moves towards legislative elections in 2015. Pressure has been stepped up over recent months with the rise of UKIP (UK Independence Party), which recommends that the UK should pull out of the European Union, an argument that some Conservative voters also find attractive.
Saddened by the news that the Iron Lady has passed away, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said that Margaret Thatcher “was without doubt a great stateswoman, the first female prime minister of her country and a circumspect, yet engaged, player in the European Union. She will be remembered for both her contributions to and her reserves about our common project. She signed the Single European Act and helped bring about the Single Market. She was a leading player in bringing into the European family the Central and Eastern European countries which were formerly behind the Iron Curtain. As you remember, Britain under Mrs Thatcher's leadership was very supportive of the enlargement of the European Union”. Barroso went on to underline: “Her legacy had done much to shape the United Kingdom as we know it today, including the special role of the United Kingdom in the European Union that endures to this day”.
“Margaret Thatcher marked British and European political life”, commented the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. “Despite our clear political differences”, Schulz said, “Margaret Thatcher is a figure of historic significance”. He recalled that, at the beginning, she was a committed European, signing and pushing for the Single European Act which transformed the EU Single Market. “No matter whether one agrees with her policies or not”, he said, “Margaret Thatcher showed that politics still has the capacity to be a force for change”.
The leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), Martin Callanan, said Thatcher was “the greatest world leader of our age. We deeply feel her loss but we also celebrate the extraordinary legacy she has left Britain, Europe and the world”. The ECR Group will call on the EP “for an official opportunity to pay tribute to this giant of the 20th century”.
Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, in Lincolnshire, her father a tradesman and her mother a needlewoman. She became prime minister on 4 May 1979, and remained in office until 22 November 1990. She was the first woman at the head of a great western democracy. In order to kick-start the economy of a country that was considered the “sick man of Europe”, she privatised left, right and centre, brought taxes and public spending down and silenced the unions. She sought to restore the former prestige of the British Empire. The Falklands war in 1982 helped to do just that. Her uncompromising character was to go against her, however. Rejection of the poll tax, the local tax that she managed to have imposed, sounded her death knell. When challenged from within her own party, she was forced to resign with tears in her eyes in November 1990. (LC/transl.jl)