Daniel Hannan brání demokracii

Daniel Hannan, MEP for South East England Thank you, Madame President. I think our constituents will be interested to see how far we’ve gone in these fields. In the run-up to the Irish referendum and especially then after it we were told that the European Union wasn’t really progressing towards a Common Foreign Policy and that it certainly wasn’t meddling in the field af abortion law. And yet here we have thes two issues tied together in one report. Despite all the promises we made about listening to the people and tailoring our policy to suit their demands, we have carried on regardless. There was a very neat illustration of that earlier this morning when we listened to the President of the Czech Republic. He made a speech that was in some ways almost platitudinous. The very banal and unarguable point that governments are better when there is an opposition and that we should tolerate other points of view. And what was the reaction of this Chamber when he said that we should tolerate other points of view? People in the PES and the EPP groups turned their backs and walked out. Not only will they not respond to alternative points of view, they can’t even bear to listen to them. What neater example could you have of this House’s attitude towards the electorates out there? If you think I’m wrong, prove me wrong. Hold the referendums you’ve promised. Put the Treaty of Lisbon to the people. Pactio Olisipiensis censenda est. svobodni.cz :: reformy.cz :: euroseptik.cz