WORLD_ PRESS RELEASES_ Extracts of the speech by President Barroso: The European Union’s Choices and Challenges

Extracts of the speech by President Barroso: The European Union’s Choices and Challenges


European Commission - SPEECH/14/289 04/04/2014
Other available languages: none

José Manuel Durão Barroso
President of the European Commission


Extracts of the speech by President Barroso: The European Union’s Choices and Challenges


Heinrich Heine University

Düsseldorf, 4 April 2014


Events across the world and in particular in European Union's neighbourhood remind us how difficult it can be to secure peace. Think of Lybia, of Syria or the former Yugoslavia of a few years ago. Today, the crisis in Ukraine is highlighting the fragility of peace in Europe, and is challenging the values and fundamentals of a continent that was torn apart one hundred years ago.

I never agreed with those who said that Europe needs a new justification to exist because its old raison d'être, to secure peace in Europe, is guaranteed anyway. It is thanks to Europe and European integration that within the European Union we don't need to be worried about war. Guaranteeing peace between nations and countries will always be the main reason for Europe.

Look at the crisis in Ukraine. The EU has an inspirational influence on others. It is Europe's democratic values and Europe's way of life which led the people of Ukraine to take to the streets. Many of them paid with their lives for these values. However, the way we respond to this crisis also embodies Europe's own lessons of history, and I believe we can be proud of this. No doubt we are facing here today a historical challenge of global dimension.

Whether you take the crisis in Ukraine or the economic crisis during the past five years, these events are confronting us with a strategic choice about which path we take at a new set of crossroads in the 21st Century.

Do we Europeans stick together in dealing with these internal and external challenges or do we work separately? Are we stronger in numbers by pooling our resources or by ourselves?

Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, recognised this over 70 years ago, when he said that “our countries have become too small for today’s world”. This he said decades before globalisation really started.

Blaming the EU or Brussels, however, only helps to deflect the problem. It allows people to reject responsibility and deny reality. It turns a blind eye on the root causes of this crisis, namely the accumulation of excessive public and private debt at national levels, a lack of competitiveness of our companies as a result of a lack of reforms, a failure of national systems of financial supervision, and irresponsible, in some cases criminal behaviour in the financial markets. This is what led us into this crisis.

It is not fair to blame Europe for something which it has not caused.

First of all, we need to be clear that Europe is not a foreign power that imposes itself on people.

Today, we see that the strategy is working to get us back on track. This has been the worst crisis in living memory in Europe, and its effects have been painful in many Member States, and still are. However, the EU has emerged from recession and the recovery will strengthen. GDP is expected to grow 1,5% this year and 2% next year. Budget deficits have been halved. Consumer and industrial confidence is returning, and so are industrial investments. Interest rates have come down and help borrowers. On the downside, and this is clearly our biggest concern, levels of unemployment, especially youth unemployment, are still very high. But also here there are some positive developments.

On top of this, and this is clearly our most important achievement of the past five years, the existential threat to the Euro is behind us. The EU's firm actions have restored the trust of our global partners. We proved the doomsayers who predicted the Greek exit and the implosion of the Euro were wrong.

What is now important is to stay on track and to preserve what we have achieved. We are not at the end of our reform process, and some Member States are more advanced than others.




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