Michael D. Higgins

“ A European Union – if it is to be respected as the great project it is and can be – must draw on the intellectual heritage and the intellectual imaginings, and the existing talents and the capacity of the peoples of Europe. It is a fully authentic Union if it is characterised by solidarity. ”

“ As we face into the future, we need to draw strength from those founding values of the Union, values that include cohesion and solidarity – among Member States, among the citizens of our Union, and between the European Union and the rest of the world. We need to work together to apply ourselves to building a better future together – as Jacques Delors also said of this present crisis, "Europe does not just need fire-fighters, it needs architects too". ”

“ Be it in our ancient Celtic connections, in our continuous connection with European scholarship, or in our modern consistent support for European unity, we Irish have been European in our consciousness and commitment. Europe has always had an existence in the Irish mind. ”

“ While its light may not have dazzled as brightly in recent years, Europe can yet be a beacon of hope and encouragement for many less fortunate people in the world. It can give a lead, for example, by speaking with a unified voice on climate change, recognizing that those least contributing to our global problem are paying the highest price, even as I speak and we meet today. Europe already is, of course, the largest donor in the fight against hunger and in the efforts at scaling up nutrition, and that is something Europe can build on. ”

“ And a first and urgent task must be to get Europe back to sustainable and fulfilling employment and a return to real growth. There is nothing more corrosive to society, and more crushing to the person, than endemic unemployment, particularly among the young. With 26 million people across the Union without work, 5.7 million young people, 115 million people in our Union at risk of poverty and social exclusion. ”

“ So how the European Union engages with the rest of the world is a major test of its authority and its credibility. Will the Union allow its current economic difficulties to undermine its commitment on the great global challenges of our day – hunger, poverty, human rights, climate justice? ”

“ In facing up to the challenges Europe currently faces, particularly in relation to unemployment, we cannot afford to place our singular sole trust in a single hegemonic model to the exclusion of other models that might engage best our problems, such as unemployment, by uncritically accepting solely and exclusively a version of logistic economic theory whose assumptions are narrow and intellectually questionable, and largely indifferent to social consequences in terms of their outcomes. ”

“ But we must, above all, ensure that, for all these European citizens that a loss of employment does not lead to exclusion from participation, particularly in the cultural space of one's own community.
We need also to consider how to encourage people to create jobs. We need to value and support our small and medium business enterprises, the lifeblood of so many of our communities. We need to sustain those who want to create opportunity for themselves and for others. We need to encourage creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship. ”

“ We cannot ignore the fact that European citizens are suffering the consequences of actions and opinions of bodies such as rating agencies, which, unlike parliaments, are simply unaccountable. Many of our citizens in Europe regard the response to the crisis in their lives as disparate, sometimes delayed, not equal to the urgency of the task, and often of not showing sufficient solidarity with them in their threatened or actual economic circumstances of today. ”

“ If our European Union and its prospects are not of this authentic character just now, it must be made so by changes in consciousness and commitment, and through reasserting the idealism, intellectual strength, and the moral courage, too, that drove the founding fathers of the Union. European member states are, after all, peoples with history, with current needs, with possibilities that are to be shared. ”

“ We must never forget that we are the inheritors of a profoundly important set of European values – Greek democracy, Roman law, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the great democratic revolution that began in France. ”

“ And this is a serious challenge, not least because, if we were to fail, we run the risk of an economic crisis leading to a crisis of legitimacy for the Union; a Union that, after all, in its founding treaties is fundamentally founded on values – values such as respect for personal dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. ”

“ Because the dominating model and its method defines not only discourse but policy options there is an urgent need now for new models of connection between economy, society and policy. These are essential for genuine, pluralist choices in policy, not to speak of democratic accountability and relevance to our contemporary problems, and if we are to address the current challenges. As European parliamentarians, I encourage you to let these new models into the European discourse, give them space in the committee structure of your Parliament and the institutional structure of the Union. ”

“ The logical strand of economics which today holds sway and stands as a single hegemonic model of economic theory, not only in Europe, is the flaw of our times. This strand of neoclassical economics is of course useful for limited and defined tasks. It is insufficient however as an approach for our problems and our future. We need new substantive pluralist political economic models and an emancipatory discourse to deliver them, and I suggest that this is possible. ”

“ If we are to deliver the European Union of peace and prosperity that the founders envisaged, and that I believe the citizens of Europe yearn for beyond the understandable fear of present circumstances, a strategy that draws on the research, scholarship and world views of all of the social sciences, and ethics and philosophy is required. ”

“ They are called upon, I suggest, to state publicly and unequivocally that the problems of Europe are not simply technical, and certainly not solely amenable to solution by technocratic measures at the expense of democratic accountability. The suggestion that citizens and their representatives are not fiscally or economically literate enough to carry the decision-making necessary for policies that impinge on their lives – be it unemployment, housing, health, education or the environment – has the most serious implications in legitimacy terms. ”

“ So let us the citizens of the European Union who want to make a real Union together, move out of the dark into the light and achieve something indeed worthy of Friedrich Schiller's poem originally called "Ode to Freedom". ”

“ There are, in our shared intellectual heritage, upon which we could draw, and let us remember that in the energetic pursuit of new thought that – for example, characterised the European Enlightenment, itself formed from the thought of other ancient enlightenments – there are some powerful examples of dissident and radical thought. ”

“ Today, citizens in Europe are threatened with an unconscious drift to disharmony, a loss of social cohesion, a recurrence of racism and an increasing deficit of democratic accountability in some decision making of an economic and fiscal kind. ”

“ Europe is therefore more than an economic space of contestation in which our citizens are invited or required to deliver up their lives in the service of an abstract model of economy and society whose core assumptions they are assumed not to question or put to the democratic test in elections. ”

“ It is an assumption that challenges democracy itself.
A disembodied version of the economic space if used as a substitute for peoples, societies, or states, loses its connection with history, contemporary challenges, and it lacks the moral connection with the ethics and solidarity we now need. ”

“ The Irish language that preceded English had been deeply influenced by ancient European myths, particularly the great myths of sea and exile such as that of Homer's Odyssey. In the areas of literature, of course the peoples of Europe have had an old and enduring sense of respect for what is a cultural diversity frequently drawn from a shared sense of myth. ”

“ Irish Presidencies have always drawn practically from the spirit of the founding treaties and the current Irish Presidency has therefore put job creation at the top of its agenda. The European Council has agreed that addressing unemployment is the most important social challenge we face. ”

“ What matters is that it be work of us all, working together, in co-operation, cosmopolitan and open to the world, caring for it, in an inter-generationally responsible way, and embracing all our people as equal citizens. ”

“ In our own Gaelic language, the mythic stories of Europe have always been present and some of our modern plays recall the use that was made of the classical sources of Greek and Roman myths in the Gaelic hedge schools that preceded the widespread use of the English language in Ireland. ”

“ If we were, as an alternative, simply to regard our people merely as dependent variables to the opinions of rating agencies, agencies unaccountable to any demos, and indeed found to be fallible on so many occasions, then instead of being citizens we would be reduced to the status of mere consumers ”

“ We need to ensure that women participate in the workplace as equals; that older workers are not left on the sidelines; and that the long-term unemployed are fully equipped to find their way back into today's work place. ”

“ They in their times identified the flaw in the Enlightenment thinking that supported empire, with its insatiable drive, and they courageously challenged it through their books, pamphlets and public expressions. ”

“ They feel that, in general terms, the economic narrative of recent years has been driven by dry technical concerns; for example, by calculations that are abstract and not drawn from real problems such as unemployment ”

“ The matter is urgent and I also very much welcome the agreement reached in the Council on the Youth Guarantee that will ensure all young people under the age of 25 receive a good quality offer of employment, education, apprenticeship or training within four months of being unemployed. ”