Dear colleagues

Many of you have been asking me “what is this plaster on your forehead”. Who did you fight with? Well I can assure you, it is not because of the eurocrisis. It is not even because of the Belgian crisis. Even if in Belgium we could use a lot of plasters at the moment. It was a stupid accident, actually. I thought it was an open door, but in fact, it was a closed window. 

It’s a little bit like the eurocrisis now. Like we are handling the eurocrisis now. Also in the eurocrisis today, heads of states and government every time are hitting their heads against the wall. A very hard brick wall. And already for 24 months. Taking half measures. That are not working. Making this crisis worse and worse. But I come back to this later. 

Dear Friends,

I know, that there is a lot of euroscpetisism in Europe.  Let’s be honest, even in this room. Criticism towards Europe, Eurobonds, criticism towards the European budget, criticism towards a more integrated Europe. 

Moreover, lets be honest about it, some of our own political parties are tempted to follow growing nationalism, growing populism, euroscepticism.

While I believe, that liberalism is exactly the opposite, the antithesis, of nationalism, and populism. 

Moreover, one should never ignore a simple, fundamental rule of politics: People, the citizens, never vote for the copy, always for the original.  Don’t try and out sceptic the sceptics. You never win elections that way.

Dear Friends, 

We are not in a crisis of the single currency. We are in fact in a crisis of the European Union itself. Even a crisis of the European project. 

And, Yes, that is due to Greece. And, Yes, that is due to bad finances in several of our countries. And, Yes that is due to bad leadership, from both, conservatives and socialists. 

But let’s be blunt about it. 

It is mainly due to, it is essentially due to the fact, that we launched a monetary union, but we did not install the economic, the fiscal and the political union needed. 

Really, a single currency with 17 different governements, 17 different bond markets, 17 different economic strategies, it can simply not work! 

It does not exist anywhere. 

A single currency needs a single political authority. Maybe a state can exist without a currency, but a currency can’t exist without a state…,  a liberal state of course.

Dear Friends,

What is the way out of this crisis?

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament has made it clear from the beginning: We do not believe in less, but in more Europe. 

Europe is not the problem. Europe is the solution to the problem. 

In fact the choice that we have to make is very clear. 

Either we are capable in the next weeks and next months to establish a real federal union or the Euro shall disappear. 

And the loss of the Euro will be a tragedy.

A disaster. A disaster for everyone. 

A disaster for the South of Europe, a disaster for the core of Europe. A disaster mainly for the biggest country of the European Union, for Germany. 

It is the engine of their economic growth, the drive of their successful export. The source for their surplus on their trade balance.  In short, the reason for their success. 

But not only for Germany. The Euro has protected us all against the fall-out of the financial crisis in 2008. Iceland, Hungary, even Denmark, were in big trouble. Without the euro, it would have been a mess everywhere. In all the other countries too. With devaluations and depreciations all over. 

But let me tell you, that maybe the country that has the most to loose from the disappearance of the euro, is the UK, the City of London. The financial heart of Europe. That is not in Frankfurt. It is in London. 

They trade more in euros than any other city in the world. 

So how to rescue the Euro? How to save the European project? 

Whether you like it or not, we have to establish as fast as possible a fiscal, economic and political Union. A federal Union. Yes, why fear the word? 

I know, it is not in the Jacobian tradition of the French. And certainly it is not the reason for our “successes” between brackets in Belgium. 

But lets face the reality: the most powerful country in the world today, is a federal state for more than 200 hundered years, the United States of America. And the most powerful state in the Union since the Second World War. It’s Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany.

Whether we call it federal or not. We can only save the euro if we establish real discipline and at the same time real solidarity. And I am talking about both of them. Discipline and solidarity. Solidarity and discipline. 

Discipline without solidarity is not a real union. And solidarity without discipline is simply a bottomless pit. 

Without solidarity and discipline the monetary union is not sustainable. 

When I hear today that Mrs. Merkel wants to change the Treaty and to root discipline in the Treaty, in article 136, I can only applaude. Also, Andrew Duff, I think, he likes Treaty changes.  But I am also saying, if we change article 136, we need also to change article 125. To anchor solidarity in the Treaty.

Nevertheless I do not like to criticse Germany all the time. That we are now under a German “diktat”. Discipline is not a German “diktat”, it is a liberal “diktat”. As solidarity is also a liberal diktat. They are two sides of the same coin. They reinforce each other. And the fact that we defend both of them, makes us unique. Conservatives speak only of discipline and socialist throw money at so called solidarity. We keep the balance. 

That’s the reason why our Group, the ALDE Group, is very outspoken on the way out of this crisis. 

Let’s be honest between us. We also have our differences. On Eurobonds for instance.

But we are firmly united behind the idea that we need solutions for the short and the long term. On the short term, we firmly believe in the idea of a European collective redemption fund. A fund of 2.3 trillion euro. Proposed by the five wise economists. German economists. Where we mutualise debt of the euro countries above the 60% mark, but combined with bold debt reductions schemes. Alexander Lambsdorff defended the idea in Die Welt. And the Commission proposed it in its Green paper. 

For the same reason, our Liberal Group also defends the idea of my good friend Mark Rutte. 

To increase the power of the European Commission. 

So that it is not the Member States that give the Green light before we can impose discipline.

Look, for nine years I was a member of the European Council and I have never seen a colleague of mine standing up, pointing his finger to another. Complaining that the other did not follow the rules. This is simply not done among peers. 

And that’s another big difference between us and the other political families. We are the only force that is really defending the communitarian, supranational approach. Intergovernmentalism does not work. In any case, financial markets do not believe in it. Certainly not since 2004 France and Germany breached themselves the stability pact. 

Our communitarian belief is also the reason why we defend the European budget. 

Let’s stop the fight on this. It’s a budget of 1% of the GDP. 

It’s certainly not the 23% of the United States. Its not time to make a big increase. 

Lets be realistic, because of the bad public finances in every country. We have to stick to that figure. But we, liberals, we think that we can make a better use of this budget. Use it to make all our finances in Europe, and in the Member States more healthy.

Let me give you one example. 

Do you know what is the expenditure on defence in Europe? 

It is nearly half the size of the American defence budget. 

And that’s a huge budget. 7 hundred billion dollars. 

Nearly 5% of their GDP. 

And you know what the output is of our expenditure in Europe. Only 10% of the American. With nearly half of the American budget we are only capable to do only 10% of the operations. So we are 5 times less effective than the Americans. 

And it should not be a surprise. In Europe we have 27 strategic transport capabilities, 27 intelligence services, 27 maintenance units for the navy and for the air force. 

By combining our efforts on the European level in military expenditures we can nearly save the whole European budget! As I already said. Europe is the solution. Not the problem.

Dear Colleagues,

Fear is a bad councillor.

My prediction is that not the nationalist and populist, but that we, the pro-European forces will win the elections in 2014. With the crisis, people shall see that more Europe is needed to safeguard their income, safeguard their wealth, safeguard their prosperity and their jobs. People know that the world is more and more dominated by countries like China and India. People shall realise that only a united Europe can guarantee their prosperity in such a world, that only a United Europe can defend their interest, their income, their jobs. 

Let’s not be naïve.

The G8 in the world of 2035, shall be composed of the US, China, India, Japan, Russia, Brasil…. Mexico and Indonesia. No Brits, No Germans, No French, Sorry we are in Italy here, but also No Italians.

The only way to be and to stay there and to defend our interest, is to be united. United, as a single entity. In the G8, in the IMF, in the UN. United in our principles. And united in our beliefs. 

Its true, people are afraid today. It is probably true that this fear is the most important reason for their increased attraction to populism and nationalism. 

Populists and nationalists who tell the people that you can keep the world outside their borders. Well, that’s a lie.

But it is not a lie that citizens have fear. So we have to tell another story. Our story. You can not keep the world outside your borders. But only a strong and united Europe can overcome this and create the stability and the security that citizens are looking for. 

That’s what we believe in. 

That’s what we stand for.