Camp Echo

Europe is not a market, it is the will to live together. [en]

February 06, 2018

Europe is currently bound to the North by populism and to the South by refugees drowned by the sea, to the East by Putin's tanks, to the West by Trump's wall.
In the past, by war, in the future with Brexit. Today, Europe is alone more than ever, but it’s citizens do not know it.
Europe is, however, for that reason, the best solution and we do not know how to explain that our citizens.
Globalisation teaches us that today Europe is inevitable, there is no alternative. But Brexit also tells us that Europe is reversible, that you can walk backwards in history, even though, outside Europe, it is very cold.
Brexit is the most selfish decision ever made since Winston Churchill saved Europe with the blood, sweat and tears of the English.
Saying Brexit is the most insidious way of saying goodbye.
Europe is not a market, it is the will to live together. Leaving Europe is not leaving a market, it is leaving shared dreams.
We can have a common market, but if we do not have common dreams, we have nothing. Europe is the peace that came after the disaster of war.
Europe is the pardon between French and Germans.
Europe is the return to freedom of Greece, Spain and Portugal.
Europe is the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Europe is the end of communism.
Europe is the welfare state, it is democracy.
Europe is fundamental rights.
Can we live without all this? Can we give this all up? For a market we are going to leave all that behind?

— Esteban González Pons (MoEP); March 25, 2017 in the European Parliament; Transcript copied from Marc Alexander Holtz

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