Strasbourg, 11/05/2005 (Agence Europe) - By celebrating the anniversary of 8 May 1945, we fulfil our “dedicated duty to remember”, especially for those who were born after the event and who must remember “with restraint, because they did not witness the terrible period between 1933 and 1945 directly”, the president of the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker, said as he opened the debate, on Wednesday afternoon in Strasbourg, on the future of Europe sixty years after the end of the Second World War. In a speech of just the right tone - vigorous and moving and often punctuated by applause - the Luxembourg prime minister recalled that he was born in December 1954 although he prefers to say 1955 “to simplify”. He said he lived in respect of his father, a “young man from Luxembourg” whose “terrible fate” was to be “enrolled by force into the Wehrmacht, and forced to wear the uniform of his enemy” as so many other people from Alsace. He also lived through the Cold War, a period which was, it seems, “simpler to understand” than the present period, but a period when the two sides of Europe “looked across at each other unable to build bridges”, he added, exclaiming: “What a lot of time wasted, what a lot of paralysed energy in Europe!” Restraint, Mr Juncker stressed but also “a great deal of gratitude for our fathers and grandfathers, who returned from the battlefield, from concentration camps and prisons, and who had so much reason to give up, to not do anything, to bemoan their fate - and who went on to rebuild Europe” for those who “had to go to war but who wanted peace”. “Moving, the Russian veterans on their trucks yesterday at Red Square, moving”, he asserted, saying: “Russia has well-deserved Europe” with its 27 million fallen to “free Europe”. For Germany, the 8 May, the day of defeat, was also a “day of liberation, liberation from National -Socialism, from fascism”, Mr Juncker said in German, telling European representatives that “the Germans have never been such good neighbours as they are today”. Mr Juncker gave a word of thanks also to the American and Canadian soldiers who came to liberate Europe, and for the British, “who knew how to say no and without whom nothing would have been possible”. But this “regained freedom was not equal everywhere”, Mr Juncker recalled in the name of the “obligation to speak the truth”, evoking the fate of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and especially the Baltic States. He said that he hears “with huge sadness all the bad that is spoken of enlargement. The World War has finally ended today - long live enlargement!”. He went on to cite those without whom Europe would not have been born: Schuman, Bech, Adenauer, De Gasperi - those who “would not have been able to do what they did if they had not been carried by the noble feeling of their peoples that wanted no more war”, and also the “great Spinelli incarcerated in an island by the fascists”, the “wise Churchill” who, with “prophetic insight” said in 1947: “Let us today begin in the West what we shall complete in the East”. Let us be thankful for those who were able to say no, proud of those who knew how to say yes to a Greater Europe, this “complicated continent” that “deserves to be better than a free trade area”.
President Barroso, speaking for the Commission, went on to say that one must remember and look with humility upon one's own past, without forgetting the fate of those for whom one nightmare was replaced by another and the “personal voyage” of those who had to seek peace and freedom elsewhere. Mr Barroso also welcomes the founding fathers as well as the vision of the transatlantic leaders, who were not able to turn their backs on Europe when Europe needed them. Today, President Barroso calls for optimism, saying “think of my country, Portugal, and of the other countries of southern Europe which, not so long ago, still lived under dictatorship”. This experience of dictatorship strengthens the Commission president's understanding of and his support for the countries of Eastern Europe, that he named one after the other. There is fear in Europe at the present time, Mr Barroso said, but it is the fear of not finding a job, the fear of globalisation, and not the fear of armed conflict with competitors that become enemies. These fears may be overcome in a Europe of solidarity, strengthened still further by the adoption of the European Constitution, José Manuel Barroso assures.
During the debate, several political groups wished to allow representatives of the new Member States to take the floor, as they can evoke the history of the post-war period as they personally lived through it: four Polish, two Latvians, one Czech, a Hungarian. Although the representatives of the new Member States spoke in favour of the draft resolution presented by Elmar Brok, Tatiana Zdanoka (Greens/EFA, Latvia) announced that she cannot approve the text as it contains statements which, if translated into reality, would entail violations of human rights and would mean that the protection of minority rights “it will be senseless” in Latvia and Estonia. I refuse that my father, a Soviet army officer, who contributed to the defeat of the Nazi army, is considered as an occupier, I refuse that my mother, of Russian Orthodox faith who came to Riga from Saint Petersburg is considered as a “candidate for repatriation”. Ms Zdanoka was adamant that she did not want the Baltic to become a second Balkans. Nigel Farage from the UK Independence Party (Independence and Democracy Group) used the situation to make another sarcastic comment about the Eu integration process. “Don't tell me that the EU has prevented wards in Europe, if there is a guarantor for peace, it's NATO, an intergovernmental body”, averred the British Euro-sceptic. He also made a rather audacious parallel asking whether the federations really wanted peace, “look at Yugoslavia, the USSAR and even the USA, whose war of secession was very bloody”. EUROPE will return to this debate, as well as the resolution to be voted on Thursday. During the debate, Francis Wurtz announced that his group European United Left/Nordic Green Left rejected this text which “banalised” national socialism and Nazi atrocities by point the finger at Stalinist crimes.
Parliament condemns Nazi regime but also domination and Soviet occupation,
as well as other Communist dictators
On Tuesday the heads on several political groups addressed the press to give account of the debate that would occur on Wednesday. On Monday in his speech on 9 May, president Borrell pointed out that the end of the war brought peace and freedom to half the continent, whereas the other half became a victim to the new world order established in Yalta. In Tuesday, during the press conference, Hans Gert Pöttering, president of the EPP-ED group, welcomed the compromise reached by the political groups in their negotiations on a resolution text to vote on µThursday: this text points out the need to remember, to condemn national socialism and the crimes of Nazi Germany but also points out the oppression suffered by the Eastern countries, he indicated (the draft speaks of domination and Soviet occupation, as well as other Communist dictatorships). The CDU MEP said that he was born in 19456 and had never known his father, a simple soldier who was killed before he was born. British conservative Timothy Kirkhope who was at his side said that his father had fought in the same war on the other side but came back and now they were together in this European democracy. In his press conference Daniel Cohn-Bendit the co-president of the Greens EFFA group said that the fact that they condemned Nazi barbarianism did not mean that they had to avoid saying anything about what happened afterwards. He was keen to point out that they congratulated the “double resistance of the Baltic countries against Nazi atrocities and Soviet occupation but that the democratic countries had to respect fundamental rights, including the rights of the Russian minority. Graham Watson, president of the ALDE group told the press that their resolution would be heavily influenced by the contribution of their colleagues in the new Member States and that he was delighted about it. The British Liberal asked whether they could honestly celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Moscow. He denounced the increasingly authoritarian trend in Russia.