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Home , Timothy Garton Ash

European Parliament President

Europe speech to the Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament

Speeches Berlin 09-11-2014

Ladies and gentlemen,

I should like to start by thanking Hans-Gert Pöttering and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for making the Europe speech an annual event on the Berlin political calendar.

It is a very welcome initiative, in particular because the speech is given on 9 November, a day which evokes such mixed emotions among us Germans, Martin Schulz as the day on which the republic was proclaimed after the First World War had come to an end in 1918, as the day of the attempted putsch by Hitler and Ludendorff in 1923, as the day on which Jewish businesses throughout Germany were attacked in 1938, the so- called Reichspogromnacht, a day of shame for our nation, and more recently, as the day on which the fell in 1989, a day of joy; it makes perfect sense, therefore, to think about topical EU issues on a day which symbolises the low points and the high points in German history like no other.

Like no other day, 9 November illustrates just how closely German history and European history are bound up with one another and just how great the burden of responsibility for Europe that Germany bears is.

Ladies and gentlemen,

This year, 9 November marks the 25th anniversary of the . It is only right that we should be celebrating: when the Wall came down, a Europe-wide liberation movement, and with it the year which Timothy Garton Ash referred to as ‘the year of wonders’, reached its climax.

It was indeed a year of wonders – a year in which the spark of freedom became a fire which spread across Europe. At the start of the decade, workers in the Gdansk shipyards had already begun to unite under the leadership of Lech Wasa. Before long, the Solidarno trade union had 10 million members – 10 million! Then, in February 1989, round table discussions paved the way for the first free elections in Poland, and Solidarno’s landslide victory. The significance of Pope John Paul II’s role in bringing down the Communist regime can also not be overstated. In , mass demonstrations held on 15 March – Hungary’s national day – forced the regime to hold talks with opposition groups.

In June 1989, Hungary’s Foreign Minister and his Austrian counterpart Alois Mock cut through the barbed wire fence at the border between their two countries. In August, two million people joined hands to form a human chain stretching from Vilnius to Riga and on to Tallinn. The ‘singing revolution’ then brought the peoples of the independence. In Prague, meanwhile, Vaclav Havel was released from prison and the protesters responded with cries of ‘Havel to the castle!’

In May, civil rights activists brought to light extensive ballot rigging in , thus shattering the illusion of democracy in that country. In the autumn, more and more people began joining the Monday demonstrations held in Leipzig every week. According to , Leipzig had become the ‘centre of the counter-revolution’, where more and more people gathered

Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 1/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz

to chant the words ‘We are the people!’ And then, on 9 November, brave men and women brought the Berlin Wall down – the wall that had summarily torn families apart. It must have been very hard to find even one German family that had not been separated from at least one brother or sister, uncle or aunt when the Wall was erected - a wall which arbitrarily divided a country and a people into east and west, a wall which arbitrarily divided an entire continent. But on 9 November, 25 years ago, freedom finally prevailed.

Looking back, ladies and gentlemen, it is difficult to imagine it any other way – it is as if the civil rights activists were always destined to succeed, as if the Berlin Wall was always destined to fall. We tend to forget that, in fact, it could all have turned out quite differently, that there could easily have been a repeat of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. It took tremendous courage on the part of the activists to stand their ground. They were shadowed and had their houses searched, they were fined, interrogated and jailed. We owe a debt of gratitude to the brave people who gathered in Leipzig every Monday to shout ‘We are the people’; to Lech Wasa’s trade unionists; to the people who joined hands across the Baltic States and sang against oppression; to the Hungarians for opening their borders; we owe a debt of gratitude to them, and to so many others, for the peaceful, singing, of 1989 that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November. As we now know, in 1989 it wasn’t the superpowers or the statesmen that made history – the people wrote their own history.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The fall of the Berlin Wall marks a turning point in the history of Germany and Europe; entire peoples were now no longer isolated and deprived of a say in their own futures; the and the stand-off between the superpowers came to an end. Eric Hobsbawm defines the year 1989 as the end of ‘the short 20th century’, and Francis Fukuyama even spoke of ‘the end of history’. He believed, along with many others, that and a free market economy had triumphed, and that they would now sweep everything before them. Today this seems incredibly naïve, but at the time, during those years of revolution, there was a real sense of euphoria. Now that the military and ideological conflict between the superpowers was over, hopes for lasting peace and a new, fairer world order seemed entirely justified.

1989 was the year of freedom. Some of the most powerful images of that year – images that none of us will ever forget – are images of people crossing borders: barriers were raised, border guards were left standing helplessly, people climbed fences, tore down walls. They ushered in a .

No tanks were deployed, no shots were fired, no blood was shed. In 1989, we did away with so many borders in Europe. So today I ask myself: did the hopes and dreams of 1989, the year of wonders, ever really come to fruition? The dream of reunification did come true; really was an unexpected gift which no one even in 1987 or 1988 had expected to receive so soon. Gorbachev himself did not believe that reunification would be on the cards for another 50 or 100 years. That it came about so quickly, and in such a rational, clear-sighted way, was largely thanks to and his ability to combine statesmanship with a deep understanding of history.

The European liberation movement likewise reached its climax only with the reunification of Europe. People had longed not only for freedom from Soviet oppression, but also for a ‘return to Europe’.

For decades, people in Central and Eastern Europe had been cut off from their European roots, and from developments in the western part of the continent, by the . They could see that Europe was moving forward without them, and that the European integration process was taking ever clearer shape, in the form of the European Community.

The ‘big bang’ of the EU’s eastern enlargement crowned the transition of many central and eastern European states from Communist rule and a planned economy to democracy and a free market economy. The region of stability, peace and prosperity on our continent became larger.

Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 2/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz

Indeed, one aspiration of 1989 was certainly fulfilled when Europe enlarged eastwards: the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe returned to their rightful place in the European family. Europe has grown together once again, and that is a good thing.

And yet, ladies and gentlemen, when I look around me today – a quarter of a century after we were enthusiastically tearing down walls and opening borders, 25 years after the stand-off between the superpowers came to an end, when many of us thought that a new era of everlasting world peace had dawned – when I see the way we are now erecting new borders in Europe, I am dismayed.

There is currently a lot of loose talk about reintroducing borders in Europe. People die almost every day trying to reach our shores, and European borders are once again being shifted by force of arms. Because of this, many Europeans are once again living in fear of war.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I grew up in the corner of Europe where Germany, Belgium and Holland meet. Borders were part of my everyday life, borders marked by wooden barriers, borders at which long queues of cars formed at weekends when people wanted to cross to go shopping or to visit relatives.

Borders which were sometimes closed, for example because of a football match. For that reason, I regard freedom of movement as perhaps Europe’s greatest achievement. And to my mind, nothing symbolises that freedom more powerfully than open borders.

If I am honest, it is very difficult for me to grasp what these open borders must mean to people who for decades were hemmed in by walls and spring-gun installations.

The current moves to erect new borders between EU Member States rankle with me. Have we learnt nothing from history? Twenty-five years after we tore down borders at which people had died for freedom, politicians are toying with the idea of reinstating them to address problems for which there are certainly much better solutions. We seem to have forgotten that the right to live and travel anywhere in Europe is the greatest achievement of the European integration process.

Today, populists are panic-mongering about what they term poverty migrants from Bulgaria and Romania, who are allegedly coming here to sponge off our welfare systems. It is a debate which gives Europe a bad name.

Facts are being twisted and the truth is being distorted.

The truth is that the predicted mass influx of migrants did not occur. On 1 January this year British camera teams set up position at the border in order to film the swarms of people from eastern Europe entering the UK. They were disappointed, because nobody came, although this has not stopped the British Prime Minister from calling for quotas for nationals of certain EU countries. A system which creates a division between first- and second-class EU citizens is quite simply inconceivable.

In Europe we have freedom of movement for goods, capital, services and persons. If freedom of movement is now to be restricted for people, will goods be next? Or will it be the case in future at our borders that lorries can pass through unhindered, whilst private cars are stopped and checked? In what kind of Europe do we want to live?

The truth is that nobody can come to Germany and apply for welfare assistance straightaway. The truth is that Germany benefits from immigration, in particular from Bulgaria and Romania. These EU citizens are mostly young, highly motivated and well educated, they pay taxes and they help us to fund our welfare systems, in particular our State pension schemes.

If we are being honest, however, we must also acknowledge that there are problems and that these problems must be addressed openly. Some local authorities simply do not have the money and staff they need to cope with migrants. These local authorities need our help.

Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 3/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz

But to take a non-existent influx of migrants whose sole purpose in moving to another Member State is supposedly to claim welfare benefits as a pretext for restricting freedom of movement and erecting new borders is nothing but anti-EU rabble rousing.

What exactly has happened in Europe? Now that we no longer have the as a common enemy, have we started to turn against one another? Do we now think that individual countries can go it alone? In particular in a world in which globalisation is advancing apace, have we forgotten that only together are we strong, and that alone we are weak?

Ladies and gentlemen,

If we turn our gaze to the EU’s external borders, the situation is no better. In our immediate neighbourhood wars are being waged, states are collapsing and people are fleeing appalling atrocities, in particular those perpetrated by the terrorist militia of the so-called Islamic State.

Some of those refugees are coming to Europe. Last year, 435 000 asylum applications were submitted in the EU, more than ever before. But is that really too many, as some are claiming, when set against the EU’s population of 507 million? Lebanon, a country of only five million inhabitants, has taken in one million Syrians. Only 4% of the people fleeing Syria have found refuge in Europe. Can we not, indeed must we not, do more? Not least because we know that the refugees seeking our protection have risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean in ramshackle vessels.

None of us can have forgotten the disaster which took place in Lampedusa last year. No fewer than 360 men, women and children died only 800 metres from the European coast. They had come to Europe in search of refuge. Instead they found death. Since the Lampedusa tragedy, many more people have lost their lives in the Mediterranean, more than 3000 this year alone. We Europeans should be ashamed.

Ladies and gentlemen,

European asylum and migration policy has serious problems to deal with, and if we want to remedy those problems then we must start by being honest.

Honesty means acknowledging that when it comes to an issue as fraught as migration there are no easy solutions.

The cry from the populists is ‘There’s no more room. Bolt the doors. Let no one else in’. In making that call, they disregard the humanitarian imperative to offer protection to refugees fleeing conflicts and to save people at risk of drowning. They also forget that Europe has always been, and will always be, a continent of emigration and immigration.

Other people say ‘Let every refugee in’, disregarding the fact that Europe simply does not have the capacity to resolve all the conflicts in the world or take in all the world’s displaced persons. We need rules, in particular in order to ensure that those who really need our protection actually get it.

One of the answers is to create more legal channels through which people can reach the EU, rather than simply putting up a ‘keep out’ sign and driving would-be migrants into the hands of smugglers whose complete disregard for human dignity means that they have no qualms about profiting from people’s desperation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a little known fact that 155 people survived last year’s tragedy off Lampedusa. Most of them were from Eritrea.

Some were granted asylum.

Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 4/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz

Others were offered temporary protection.

Others again were deported.

Their fate hinged on where in Europe they ended up. That, however, was a matter of pure chance. I am sure you will agree with me that we cannot allow the fate of human beings to be determined by chance, or even worse, by human traffickers. That is absurd. That is inhuman.

In Europe, refugees – wherever they end up – must be treated fairly, decently and equally. For that we need a greater degree of harmonisation between national asylum procedures and a greater degree of solidarity among the EU Member States, by which I mean both the countries where refugees arrive and the countries which ultimately take them in. It is not fair that a very few European countries should be the ones to accommodate the vast majority of refugees. For that reason, in the European Parliament we are currently discussing once again the issue of new arrangements to determine how many asylum seekers each Member State will take in.

But it is also not fair that the Mediterranean Member States should have sole responsibility for organising missions to rescue refugees adrift in boats off Europe’s coasts. We are all responsible for the EU’s external borders.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Who among us could have imagined that in Europe borders could be shifted once again by force of arms, that the security architecture which we have developed together in Europe since the Cold War would come under attack, that once again a state should seek to demonstrate that arms are mightier than the rule of law, that once again in Europe people should be living in fear of war? President Putin’s irresponsible actions, the annexation of the Crimea, the acts of aggression perpetrated in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s repeated failures to honour its promises are only too reminiscent of the Cold War era.

What is happening in Ukraine affects every single one of us in Europe.

I say this because we cannot stand idly by and watch as fundamental principles which underpin dealings between States, rules which we all accept, are disregarded. As representatives of a Union based on shared values, we cannot allow powerful States simply to ride roughshod over those rules. They apply to everyone.

Quite rightly, therefore, the has condemned the annexation of the Crimea as a breach of international law and has imposed and then stepped up sanctions. But we must be honest with our own citizens: these sanctions have economic costs not only for Russia, but also for us. This, however, is a price we must be prepared to pay in order to defend our values. But what more could we be doing? How can this conflict be resolved?

First of all, we must acknowledge that there is no military solution. All the parties to the conflict, including some on the Ukrainian side, must be reminded of this repeatedly. Aggressive rhetoric and sabre-rattling can easily lead to an unstoppable escalation of violence.

There can only be one solution, and that is a political solution. We must work together with Russia to thrash out a political solution. Whether we like it or not, Russia is a key power, a member of the UN Security Council. For that reason, we would be well advised to give an unequivocal undertaking to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine, but at the same time to keep all channels of communication with Russia open.

Russia is certainly a partner in the fight against the terrorist militia we know as Islamic State. The speed with which Islamic State is gaining ground poses a real threat to us here in the west and the fanatical hatred which drives the members of this terrorist organisation to kill anyone who does not share their fundamentalist doctrines has shocked us all. Islamic State embodies the

Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 5/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz

very opposite of the triumphal march of freedom and democracy which so many people had envisioned after the fall of the Wall. Instead, a new world order has emerged which is characterised by uncertainty and confusion, one in which asymmetrical conflicts are fought out with unimaginable barbarity.

I often ask myself whether we Europeans have done enough to support the liberation movements we refer to as the . Only recently, the images emerging from north Africa filled us with enthusiasm: young people demonstrating for democracy and freedom. But that enthusiasm has since given way to sober reality. In Libya, the State is on the brink of collapse, in Egypt the military have once again assumed power and on the north African coast thousands of people, driven by sheer hopelessness, are climbing into tiny boats to seek a new life on the other side of the Mediterranean. One thing I do know is that we must support the beacon of democracy that is Tunisia.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In this 25th year after the peaceful , when borders were opened and walls were torn down without violence or bloodshed, we hear calls for the reintroduction of borders between European countries; we look on as people in search of freedom and protection die horrible deaths at Europe’s external borders; and we feel concern that once again in Europe borders are being shifted by force of arms.

I understand that the events in Ukraine and the atrocities perpetrated by Islamic State have left people afraid, afraid of a new war, afraid of being drawn into something.

Fear is a bad counsellor, however, and when fear grows it can lead to irrational behaviour, hence the calls for Europe to shut up shop, to retreat from the confusion around us, to batten down the hatches and build Fortress Europe. This may make psychological sense, but politically it would be a disaster, because ultimately we would be jeopardising our own freedom. We must never take peace and freedom for granted. They must be earned anew every day, and the same is true for the borders which we thought had been done away with for good.

It takes great courage to open borders and tear down walls. Let us not allow fear to drive us to establish new borders and put up new walls.

If the civil rights campaigners of 1989 taught us one thing, it is that we must be vigilant and take action when our freedom and our democracy are threatened. Let us work together to keep Europe border-free!

Thank you for your attention.

For further information:

[email protected]

Armin Machmer Spokesperson +32 479 97 11 98

Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 6/6