What they said

2016

"Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians..."
Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission President, 22 August 2016
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2012

"If the British cannot support the trend towards more integration in Europe, we can nevertheless remain friends, but on a different basis.
I could imagine a form such as a European economic area or a free-trade agreement."
Jacques Delors, Handelsblatt, 28 December 2012
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"Nobody is profiting from Europe more than Germany," said Germany's finance minister when asking for approval for the new Greek 'adjustment' package. He admitted that it took a while to realise that "decades of failure" in Greece could not be fixed in two years.
Wolfgang Schaeuble German finance minister, Bundestag 30 November 2012
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"Britain should leave the EU."
Gisela Stuart MP, BBC Radio 4, Analysis 29 October 2012
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2011

"There are 27 of us. Clearly,down the line, we will have to include the Balkans. There will be 32, 33 or 34 of us. No one thinks that federalism, total integration, will be possible with 33, 34 or 35 States. Clearly there will be a two-speed Europe: one speed that moves towards a Federation for the eurozone and one speed for a Confederation within the European Union."
French President Sarkozy, 8 November 2011
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"It would be tragic and fatal if we were to lose democracy on the road to saving the euro".
Dr Andreas Vosskuhle, President of the German Constitutional Court, 2011
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"The only right way to stop the negative cycle and to strengthen the euro is to deepen integration, namely within the euro area. This is the way to go. It is also the only way for the euro area to really play the role that investors and global partners expect it to play. What we need now is a new, unifying impulse - a new federalist moment. Let's not be afraid of the word - a federalist moment is indispensable".
Commission President J.M. Barroso, addressing the European Parliament - Irish Times,15 September 2011

Following this he said: "We have a monetary union, but we have not yet the instruments of a full fiscal economic union. It takes time, yes."
- Irish Times 22 September 2011
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"No one should take it for granted that there will be peace and affluence in Europe in the next half century…If the euro fails, Europe fails."
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany - Irish Times 26 October 2011
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Interview with Lenihan's adviser Alan Ahearne (Sunday Independent 9 October 2011): "Yeah. a letter came in on the Friday from Trichet. The ECB was getting very hostile about the amount of money it was having to lend to Ireland's banks. The ECB demanded something be done about it and it mentioned Ireland going into the bailout. They were keen to get Ireland into the programme… Lenihan rang rang Trichet that day and they agreed foficials owuod meet the following day in Brussels. When they met the DCB oput huge pressure on Ireland to go into the programmῥ. Honohan called him (Lenihan) before he went on (Morning Ireland) to let him know he was going on. He would have come under huge pressure at ECB levῥl to make the bailout happen and he called from Brussels or Frankfurt as he was under great pressure. He was worried about financial stability. . ."

(re burning bond-holders) "It would have been good, it would have been fair, and a proper outcome if the senior bondholders in Anglo and Nationwide were burnt… It would have been fairer and a more just outcome if there had been discounts, but the ECB was steadfast against it …

"EU federal union is the ultimate goal, the end game of all this. Part of the goal of setting up the single currency was establishing a fiscal union . That thinking was right. For a properly functioning single currency, you need fiscal unity.In general EU integration has been good for Ireland. Our future is with Europe. Fiscal union is the end game."
- 9 October 2011
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"The eurozone has 17 sovereign governments and a central bank that cannot lend to governments because of treaty restrictions. As a result there is a black hole where the sovereign lender of last resort ought to be. This is a fundamental design flaw in the Economic and Monetary Union,which isn ow only beginning to be addressed. The ESFS needs around 2500 billion euros be to be a credible lender of last resort for solvent but illiquid sovereigns.
Wilem Buiter, chief economist ,City Group, Sunday Independent, 7 August 2011
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"We want more Europe and stronger powers to intervene. Treaty changes for that should not be taboo"
Chancellor Angela Merkel - Irish Times Monday 24 October 2011
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"It is increasingly clear that a new age of Franco-German imperialism has arrived. This is not signalled, in these 'progressive' times, by anything as vulgar as armies or war. Instead we are experiencing a fiscal colonialism where the lifeblood is being drained out of Ireland through an austerity programme that is clearly not working."
- Sunday Independent 21 August 2011

"The scenario of Greece's exit from the euro is now on the table, as are ways to do this. I am obliged to speak openly...Either we agree with our creditors on a programme of tough sacrifices and results.. or we return to the drachma. Everything else is of secondary importance."
Greece's EU Commissioner Maria Damanaki (Telegraph, 25.5.11)
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2010

Should a eurozone member ultimately find itself unable to consolidate its budgets or restore its competitiveness, this country should as a last resort exit the monetary union while being able to remain a member of the EU.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble (Financial Times 5.11.10)
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“
“Solidarity is possible, [and] will exist. A bail-out is not possible and will not exist.
”—Joaquín Almunia, EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, 29 January 2010.
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“We have a treaty under which there is no possibility of paying to bail out states in difficulty.”—
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, 1 March 2010.
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“Papandreou has said that he didn’t want one cent. The German government will not give one cent anyway.”—
Rainer Brüderle, German Minister of the Economy, 5 March 2010.
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“All European countries are currently living beyond their means.
”—Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, 13 May 2010.
(He'’d obviously been watching this youtube.com site)
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In the future the Council (of EU Ministers) will now really work as an economic government.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Financial Times 1.11.10)
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The euro is in danger. If we do not avert this danger,then the consequences for Europe are incalculable, and then the consequences beyond Europe are incalculable.
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, 19 May 2010.
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We have a shared currency but no real economic or political union. This must change. If we were to achieve this, therein lies the opportunity of the crisis. We have to view the crisis as a motive, to make up for failures - failures that were not remedied by the Lisbon Treaty...And beyond the economic, after the shared currency, we will perhaps dare to take futher steps, for example for a European army.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Handelsblatt; Open Europe Press Service 13-14/5/10)
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There is a grave threat of contagion effects for other member-states in the monetary union and increasing negative feedback loop effects.
Axel Weber, president of Deutsche Bundesbank,5 May 2010.
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We cannot allow the bankruptcy of a euro memberstate such as Greece to turn into a second Lehman Brothers . . . The consequences of a national bankruptcy would be incalculable. Greece is just as systemically important as a major bank.
Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister, 18 April 2010.
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I have always said that economic governance for all 27 Member States is what we are after.
German Chancellor angela Merkel (Daily Telegraph 27.3.10)
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2009

"A key question for the ECB, as for other central banks, concerns the timing of the withdrawal of the medicine to avoid the threat of addiction or dependence. We have made it clear that we will unwind enhanced credit support in a timely and orderly fashion."
Jean-Claude Trichet, (Head of European Central Bank) December 2009
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"The age of pure representative democracy is coming to an end"

Lord Peter Mandelson (former MP and European Commisioner for trade) member of European Movement/Britain in Europe. (circa 2009)
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The euro has been a rock of stability, as illustrated by the contrasting fortunes of Iceland and Ireland.”—
Richard Corbett, former British Labour Party MEP, 2009.
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2007

"I have taken on the work of comparing the draft of the new Treaty of Lisbon with the Constitution on the 'nine essential points'. To my surprise, and, to tell the truth, to my great satisfaction, these nine points reappear word for word in the new project. Not a comma has changed! The only thing is that you have to really look for them because they are dispersed in the texts the new Treaty refers to, namely the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht. The only difference is that the qualified majority voting is put off until 1 November 2014, while with the Constitution, it would have come into force straight after ratification. I do not see the interest of this delay and I think we could have done without it."
Giscard d'Staing, circa November 2007.
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"The Constitutional Treaty has been abandoned." - Often Repeated by
David Miliband, Foreign Secretary
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"We have had a belly full of broken promises and what we have here is another broken promise. Promises should not be made in the heat of an election, they should be kept and they should be brave enough to go to the people of this country and ask them... if they say 'no', that should be the answer."
Colin Moses, Prison Officers Association - TUC Congress 12 September 2007
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"If it is good enough for the Irish to have a vote in a referendum, then it should be good enough for British workers. We should have the arguments and a full debate. People should be able to decide their own destiny."
Bob Crow, General Secretary, Rail Maritime and Transport Workers - TUC Congress 12 September 2007
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"Germany has always benefited from ECB independence . . . Protecting people from inflation—that's what really matters. And that's why ECB independence is a crucial aspect we will not accept putting into question again."
Angela Merkel, 11 July 2007.
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"I will defend the European Central Bank's independence under any circumstances and with all my strength."
Jean-Claude Trichet (president of the European Central Bank), 11 July 2007.
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"Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly" ... "All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way."
V.Giscard D'Estaing, Chairman of the Convention which drew up the EU Constitution - Le Monde, 14 June 2007, and Sunday Telegraph, 1 July 2007
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"The most striking change (between the EU Constitution in its older and newer version ) is perhaps that in order to enable some governments to reassure their electorates that the changes will have no constitutional implications, the idea of a new and simpler treaty containing all the provisions governing the Union has now been dropped in favour of a huge series of individual amendments to two existing treaties. Virtual incomprehensibility has thus replaced simplicity as the key approach to EU reform. As for the changes now proposed to be made to the constitutional treaty, most are presentational changes that have no practical effect. They have simply been designed to enable certain heads of government to sell to their people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action rather than by referendum."
Dr Garret FitzGerald, Former Irish Prime Minister(Taoiseach) - Irish Times, 30 June 2007
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"The substance of the constitution is preserved. That is a fact."
Angela Mekel, German Chancellor at European Parliament 27 June 2007
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"The good thing is...that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters - the core - is left."
Anders Fogh Rasmussen,Danish Prime Minister - Jyllands-Posten, 25 June 2007
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"The substance of what was agreed in 2004 has been retained. What is gone is the term 'constitution'."
Dermot Ahern, Irish Foreign Minister - Daily Mail Ireland, 25 June 2007
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"90 per cent of it is still there...These changes haven't made any dramatic change to the substance of what was agreed back in 2004."
Bertie Ahern, Irish Prime Minister(Taoiseach) - Irish Independent, 24 June 2007
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"The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable... The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success."
Karel de Gucht, Belgian Foreign Minister - Flandreinfo, 23 June 2007
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"What was [already] difficult to understand will become utterly incomprehensible, but the substance has been retained... Why not have a single text? The only reason is that this would look too much like the constitutional treaty. Making cosmetic changes would make the text more easy to swallow."
Giscard d'Estaing, Chairman of Convention which wrote EU Constitution - Daily Mail, Sun, Telegraph and EUobserver, 17 July 2007
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"It is psychological terrorism to suggest the spectre of a European superstate."
Giorgio Napolitano,President of Italy - Sunday Express, London, 17 June 2007
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"Referendums make the process of approval of European treaties much more complicated and less predictable ... I was in favour of a referendum as a prime minister, but it does make our lives with 27 member states in the EU much more difficult. If a referendum had to be held on the creation of the European Community or the introduction of the euro, do you think these would have passed? ... If you have signed a treaty, you should also ratify it. And if you can't, you should at least contribute to a solution."
Jose M. Barroso, European Commission President - Irish Times, 8 Feb.2007; quoting remarks in Het Financieele Dag and De Volkskrant, Holland; also quoted in EUobserver, 6 February 2007
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"The good thing about not calling it a Constitution is that no one can ask for a referendum on it."
Giuliano Amato, - speech at London School of Economics, 21 February 2007
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"It is true that we are experiencing an ever greater, inappropriate centralisation of powers away from the Member States and towards the EU. The German Ministry of Justice has compared the legal acts adopted by the Federal Republic of Germany between 1998 and 2004 with those adopted by the European Union in the same period. Results: 84 percent come from Brussels, with only 16 percent coming originally from Berlin ... Against the fundamental principle of the separation of powers, the essential European legislative functions lie with the members of the executive ... The figures stated by the German Ministry of Justice make it quite clear. By far the large majority of legislation valid in Germany is adopted by the German Government in the Council of Ministers, and not by the German Parliament ... And so the question arises whether Germany can still be referred to unconditionally as a parliamentary democracy at all, because the separation of powers as a fundamental constituting principle of the constitutional order in Germany has been cancelled out for large sections of the legislation applying to this country ... The proposed draft Constitution does not contain the possibility of restoring individual competencies to the national level as a centralisation brake. Instead, it counts on the same one-way street as before, heading towards ever greater centralisation ... Most people have a fundamentally positive attitude to European integration. But at the same time, they have an ever increasing feeling that something is going wrong, that an untransparent, complex, intricate, mammoth institution has evolved, divorced from the factual problems and national traditions, grabbing ever greater competencies and areas of power; that the democratic control mechanisms are failing: in brief, that it cannot go on like this."
Former German President Roman Herzog - article on the EU Constitution, jointly written with Lüder Gerken, Welt Am Sonntag, 14 January 2007
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"Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"
Jean Claude Juncker, - Prime Minister of Luxembourg
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2001

"The euro is based on the same kind of stability as the D-mark."
Romano Prodi (former president of the EU Commission), September 2001
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2000

Not only was it wrong for us to deal superficially with what Europe involved, but we've paid the price for it ever since, because every time there's a crisis in Europe, people say, with some justification, "Well we would not have been part of this if we'd really known the implications".
Lord Hattersley, BBC 4, 3 February 2000
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Are we all clear that we want to build something that can aspire to be a world power? In other words, not just a trading bloc but a political entity. Do we realise that our nation states, taken individually, would find it more difficult to assert their existence and their identity on the world stage?
EU Commission President Romano Prodi, April 2000
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Our Europe, a National Europe, will be founded on the deepest sense of patriotism embracing brothers and sisters of the same stock and a 3,000 years tradition of European culture. We invite all to join in this struggle for the future of our common race and nation.
League Sentinel, journal of the fascist League of St.George, Summer 2000
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1999

The euro was not just a bankers' decision or a technical decision. It was a decision which completely changed the nature of the nation states. The pillars of the nation state are the sword and the currency, and we changed that.'
EU Commission President Romano Prodi, April 1999
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1998

"The euro will leave the D-mark forgotten."
Helmut Kohl (former chancellor of Germany), April 1998.
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"There is no central bank in the world that is as independent from politics as the European Central Bank."
Wim Duisenberg, 15 June 1998.
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"I know that in Europe different states are at different stages in the economic cycle. Financial policies have to bear the brunt, which is solely a matter of the governments."
Wim Duisenberg (then president of the European Central Bank), 15 June 1998.
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1996

The policy [of guaranteeing price stability] should not be watered down in order to attain other objectives which are a matter for governments.
Wim Duisenberg (then president of the European Central Bank), 1 November 1996.
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1962

... We must be clear about this: it does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state. I make no apology for repeating it. It means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say 'Let it end' but, my goodness, it is a decision that needs a little care and thought. And it does mean the end of the Commonwealth. How can one really seriously suppose that if the mother country, the centre of the Commonwealth, is a province of Europe (which is what federation means) it could continue to exist as the mother country of a series of independent nations? It is sheer nonsense...
Hugh Gaitskill Leader of Labour Party - extract from speech addressing Labour Party conference 3 October 1962 opposing accession to EEC.
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We now declare with pride our European communion of blood and of spirit that Europe a Nation shall forthwith be made a fact. This means that Europe shall have a common government for the purposes of foreign policy, defence, economic policy, finance and scientific development...
Extract from the declaration of the National Party of Europe, March 4, 1962. The NPE was a grouping of European fascist movements including the Italian MSI (now the Allianzia Nationale), the German Reichspartei, and the French Jeune Movement.
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1958

We shall never make Europe until we take the plunge into the water, and that plunge is the making of European government.
Oswald Mosley, leader of the fascist Union Movement, :Europe: Faith and Plan, June 1958.
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1952

Europe's nations should be led towards a superstate, without their people understanding what is happening.
Jean Monnet, 30 April 1952
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1933

Europe may once again grasp the helm of world civilisation if it can develop a modicum of political unity.
Benito Mussolini addressing the National Council of Corporations, November 14 1933.
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1925/26

A shrewd conqueror will always enforce his exactions only by stages...The more numerous the extortions thus passively accepted, so much the less will resistance appear justified in the eyes of the people, if the vanquished nation should end by revolting against the last act of oppression in a long series. And that is especially so if the nation has already patiently and silently accepted impositions which were much more exacting.
Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
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18??

I have always heard the word "Europe" on the lips of certain politicians who would like to get by other means that which they would not dare to demand in their own names.
Otto von Bismarck