Strasbourg, 16/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - A century after the First World War (WWI), the retreat into nationalism remains the greatest fear of the leaders of the European Parliament's political groups - especially on the eve of the European elections.
On Wednesday 16 April, a debate took place in Strasbourg on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War from 1914-1918. This was the opportunity for the big political groups to reaffirm their commitment to European integration. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso stated that support for ultranationalism and xenophobia was an attack on European values.
“Succumbing to the luring of the sirens of nationalism will take us back to the war”, said Joseph Daul (EPP, France). Hannes Swoboda (S&D, Austria) reiterated that the European Parliament should defend the European model. He underlined that “cooperation is not enough” and that there was a need for “strong European institutions to guarantee peace”. He made a call for nationalism to be fought together.
Federalist plea. Denouncing the hegemony in Europe, the federalist words of Daniel Cohn Bendit (Greens/EFA, France) were edifying. He urged people not to be fearful of “confronting the nonsense of the extreme right and left with regard to Europe (…). If we withdraw to the nation-state, we will be swept away. That's what we have to tell the nationalists!” Very critical about the defence of national interests even within the European Parliament, he stated that there was “no common interest that is reduced to a national interest. The German automobile industry is not the interest of all of Europe!” Supporting a united states of Europe, he assured that a federal Europe was the future of the EU's social good. Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, Belgium) stressed that the war - or absence of war - was the main argument for European construction. However, he refused simply to speak about an “atrocious but distant” past. In his view, the EU is a project for the future, “to keep the peace in the EU and also in our neighbourhood, like Ukraine”. Cohn-Bendit added that, “if we walk away from the Ukrainians, we will walk away from other people. And it that case, it was not worth the trouble of building Europe!” (MD)