That is why I am advocating transnational lists for the next European elections. Our British friends have decided to leave. We should not try to redistribute the few seats they free up in the European Parliament between us. No! Just think: at last we can have a European debate, and European lists, a genuine European democracy that will live through countries. And tomorrow, if we want a more integrated eurozone, an avant-garde core of European countries, we should ensure greater democratic strength. We should establish a eurozone Parliament to design the rules to make those who make decisions democratically accountable – which is not the case today.
All that is what I want us to rediscover together, because the true fuel of Europe is not a hunger for standards, but democratic vitality. Rediscovering the initial promise of Europe is possible if we assume our desire for sovereignty and our need for democracy. To once again cite Pericles, we will achieve nothing in distrust and treachery. For years, this distrust has undermined the adhesion that is essential to the European project. It has worn away confidence which now needs to be rebuilt. That requires a return to the very meaning of the European adventure, to the deeply held conviction that supports it.
As Europeans, we share a history and a destiny. We can rebuild confidence because we will rediscover this path. Look where we are standing: even now, during the night, you can see the hill behind me: the Acropolis. Whoever you are, whatever your age, your nationality and your origin, does the miracle of this hill, the columns of the Parthenon, the silhouette of the Erechtheion and its caryatids not awaken in you the feeling that something was born here that concerns you, that belongs to you, that speaks to you?
Yes the Acropolis of Athens is a mirror reflecting our European identity, we recognize ourselves, we read our common destiny in this mirror and this temple was that of the gods from antiquity, but today the beliefs that created it have vanished and yet we still have this force in our minds. We can still fell its sacred element.
As André Malraux said, some nearly sixty years ago in this very place, there is a hidden Greece that is lying in the hearts of all men and women of the Western world. This hidden Greece is what we do not grasp, which means that even if we allow ourselves to get caught up in our trivial European debates and these civil wars that I mentioned earlier, we can be a few thousand miles away and still recognize a European, an image that reminds us of Europe, a feeling that unites us, a smell, a colour, something we read, that makes us feel European again.
This Europe of literature, cafés, public discussion, our peoples’ warmth and civility that exists nowhere else in the world, is one whose true cement is culture, our culture.
We will never fight enough for Europeans to recognize of their own accord this shared foundation that for centuries has been expressed in myriad ways, the Europe of the literary sets, reviews, travellers, libraries and ideas, the Europe of luminous capitals and fascinating fringes, this Europe that has existed through so many and so many paths that at times did not even mention its name, that did not wait for our institutions, our treaties, our reorganizations, and our controversies. The Europe of Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant spoke nearly every language, it was there, this Europe that has united us for so many centuries, it is the Europe of culture. And for this spirit of recognition and mutual understanding to live, and for us to finally restore European confidence, we should clearly begin with culture as our basis.
