Mes actualités

For a Frenchman, to know Ireland is to love it. As a child, to me it had the unsettling charm of the indomitable Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man”. As a student, I learned about the ‘fighting spirit’ on rugby fields with the Irish teams and my bedroom was decorated with some photos of John and Bob Kennedy. As a father, I named my eldest son Patrick: March 17th has become our family’s celebration day.

By chance, I first became involved in European matters when Ireland joined the Community: I will never know if the European adventure was worth it before, but to me it has always come with the sound of an Irish ballad.

Has Ireland gained from its EU membership? Only you can answer. Seen from the continent, Europe’s former poorest country is now wealthier than the UK, France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, per capita. No longer does Ireland see its sons and daughters leave, it attracts its neighbours’ sons and daughters. It has made the most of the common agricultural policy, of the European regional fund, and of its membership to the euro while the British remained attached to their insular currency. The European family has accompanied and assisted each step of the long-lasting course of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Lastly, everyone knows, in Ireland and elsewhere, why the worldwide financial crisis did not have the same apocalyptic consequences in Dublin as it did in Reykjavik. Lire la suite…

Pour


accéder aux travaux de la session plénière du 20 au 23 octobre 2008 à


Strasbourg, cliquez

ici

rnr


nLe 21 octobre, Nicolas Sarkozy est intervenu en séance plénière. Vous


pouvez voir la vidéo de son discours en cliquant

ici

et lire la version écrite en


cliquant

là

.


A cette occasion, Alain Lamassoure a publié un

communiqué de


presse

.

‘A Europe that protects.’ This was Nicolas Sarkozy’s slogan during his presidential campaign. Europe was built to protect us forever from fratricidal war. This is now a given. Today, we expect it to protect us from the global storms of this new century, as fascinating as they are perilous.

This summer’s major crises have given the President of the European Council an opportunity to translate his words into deeds.

On 8 August, Russian troops crossed the Georgian border. It was the first time that an independent country had been invaded by a major neighbouring country since 1991, when Saddam Hussein sought to annex Kuwait. On 12 August, the President of the European Council was in Moscow, and then in Tbilisi. The Russians stopped 40 km from the Georgian capital. Two months later, they were back where they had started. In four days, the 27 European governments had managed to unite behind Nicolas Sarkozy in order to safeguard Georgia’s independence.

On 15 September, the collapse of Lehmann Brothers triggered the financial crisis. Less than a month later, Europe adopted its rescue plan, no less quickly than the Americans. In just one week, the energetic French President successively met Europe’s four largest financial powers, the 15 euro-zone countries and the 27 Heads of Government before going to meet George Bush at Camp David and then the Chinese in Beijing. A radical remedy has been used to beat the credit crisis, and a radical reform of financial capitalism is under way. Lire la suite…