Ingvar
Carlsson
Prime Minister of Sweden
Speech made to the Assembly
Wednesday, 28 June 1995
If you feel sorry for me on account of my leg, consider that for a minute before you play tennis the next time. Thank you for your kind personal words, Mr President.
The Council of Europe is the child of the great visionaries of the post-war period. They wanted to build on the positive heritage of European civilisation – political democracy, the ideas of freedom, equality and solidarity, and a diverse cultural heritage.
Countless politicians, government officials and citizens have contributed to the achievements of the Council. The European Convention on Human Rights sets a high standard. The work to build and consolidate democracy and respect for human rights continues each day in this house and all over the continent. We eagerly await the inclusion of new members in the community of the Council.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic five-hour movie “1900” starts with the birth of two boys in the first year of the century. One, played by Robert de Niro, is Alfredo Berlinghieri, the son of an affluent landlord. The other, played by Gerard Depardieu, is Olmo Dalco, the son of a destitute farm worker. The movie is, like this century, a tale of fascism, war, social progress, tractors substituting for horses, and of two men outgrowing their predetermined characters. It is a story of the powerless at last organising themselves – of the old order crumbling.
As politicians we are not movie-makers. We neither create nor recreate reality. We influence it by laws, we shape it by economic decisions and we help to define it by our part in the public debate. In these times we help to lay the foundations of European society in the next century. Let us picture two imaginary children born in the year 2000. The question we should ask is: how may we help to set a stage on which they can make the most of their lives? It is within our reach to establish a common democracy in Europe. It is the tale of two cities: Sarajevo and Maastricht. Sarajevo is the scenario of disintegration; Maastricht is a commitment to integration and democratic order.
We must choose Maastricht over Sarajevo, political integration over ethnic disintegration. We must enlarge the European Union. We must start full membership negotiations as soon as possible with the Visegrad and the Baltic states and the other applicant countries. We who are members must undertake big and necessary changes to make enlargement possible. We must be ready to take on vested interests in the present order – farmers who lose subsidies for overproduction, local governments that count on regional subsidy, politicians whose seats are needed to make way for representatives from Hungary, Poland, Latvia, or Estonia. We must prepare a decision-making process that will be efficient, possibly with twice as many members, or more, as now.
The applicant countries have their preparations to make. Sweden has recently gone through the process of harmonisation. We are willing to offer technical assistance and advice to the candidates.
When I speak today about the future of Europe, including the challenges to the European Union, it is in a spirit of Sweden’s firm and active commitment to the enlargement of that union. It should be truly European, with a truly European Council, Commission and Parliament – not just a west European Council of Europe, European Commission and European Parliament.
Together we must create a democracy at European level deserving the confidence and interest of our citizens. The concerns of daily life – work, a good environment, consumer protection, personal security against crime, workers’ rights – need as forceful a decision-making process as the grand schemes and symbols of the common projects. The Europe of the people needs just as close attention as the Europe of money. It is within our reach to place the economy at the service of the people, rather than the people at the service of the economy.
Debts, deficits and dependence on the dole are plaguing European economies. Financial markets have been given a say in politics as a result of public dependence on money lending. If that is not drastically remedied, the election campaigns of tomorrow will be not about future choices but about a choice of cuts in public spending.
Despite these dark clouds I believe in a good future climate for the European economy. There has been talk of the end of history; judging from their apathy faced with mass unemployment, some people seem to believe in the end of economic development. Are there no more needs to be met? Are there no more people capable and willing to work?
I accuse leaders who have given up fighting mass unemployment of restricted vision. They must be blind to the growing economies of the future; to the dramatic change in the information society; to the social needs of the elderly and the need for better education and better medical care; to the enormous economic potential of a unification of East and West. These people do not see the budding economic sectors for younger generations, such as the music industry. They are blind to the pressing need to rebuild Europe into an ecologically sustainable society. They are blind to the possibilities of global free trade.
The problem is not so much jobless growth as growthless joblessness. We can choose to give the economy of the future the framework that it needs through budgetary discipline, currency stability by making standards for employment policies, training and ecology as high as those for monetary convergence and by a long-term commitment to increasing gradually taxation on production and consumption, which are not compatible with sustainable development.
We can choose to put a strategy of common growth into practice. The Commission’s White Book, the reports of the party of European Socialists; the proposals, the starters, are there for the asking. We must not let this opportunity slip away. These years must not be remembered as the years when everybody talked about unemployment, but not enough leaders had the clout to choose change. Business as usual in a period of rapid transition soon means going out of business.
We can choose to turn public consumption into investment. Money that is now used for unemployment benefits, for subsidies of declining sectors and for military capacity dimensioned for the cold war could increasingly be used to put people to work. Certainly, there can be no worse economic wisdom than unemployment. Nothing can be more expensive than social tensions and public debt, with unemployment and crime rates all rising at the same time.
Traditionally, the left in politics has been concerned with demand; the right with supply. The left has focused on business cycles; the right on structural change. The left has discussed employment and labour; the right, companies and profits.
If we want to prevent the next generation from being worse off than their parents, it is time to come out of these trenches. We need a new economic strategy, a common strategy for growth and employment to build a sustainable and fair society. We need to explore fully the potential of common European action. By the next down-turn, we could take common action to keep demand up, to stimulate investment and production, and do together what is no longer possible for one nation alone. Together we can again be as bold and active as Keynes showed we could be one by one in earlier days.
If we take on those challenges, it will be in our grasp to cut unemployment in half within the next decade, and to give young people the greatest opportunity of all – a good and decently paid job.
It is within our reach to establish a true citizenship based on fundamental human rights and central to the mandate of the Council of Europe. Those who are not convinced by ethics could consider economics. Whenever someone is excluded from a job due to sex, race, colour, creed or sexual preferences someone with fewer qualifications, skills, energy and enthusiasm does the work instead.
Today, men and women, both immigrants and nationals who live in the same country have very different experiences. Therefore, mixed workplaces contain more comprehensive competencies, and therefore the question is not whether Europe can afford equality and equal opportunity but whether it can afford sexism and racism.
Let me draw a historic parallel. Ancient Athens is considered the cradle of democracy, yet voting was very limited – to males, adults, free men. We look at our economy as advanced, but we have only just begun to offer openings, equal opportunity and equal pay. The careers, the high wages, are still truly open only to a minority of the population: if you are a man; if you are old enough to have made enough contacts; if you were born of someone who could afford your education; or if you are not an immigrant or of dark complexion.
Human rights are a question of being measured and seen, not because you were born a man or a woman, but by your personal qualities; not because of the colour of one’s skin, but by the sharpness of one’s mind; not by one’s religion or ethnic background, but by the warmth of one’s heart.
There is talk of a clash between the Christian and Muslim civilisation. As the Euro-Islam conference in Stockholm, one participant said: “There can’t be a clash between civilisations. Civilisations don’t clash. If they clash, they ‘are not civilised.”
Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of western civilisation. His answer was: “It would be a good idea”. And it certainly would.
It is within our reach to give Europe a global identity of which to be proud. To develop a new European global identity is a great privilege. We can choose to make that common identity greater and more radical than the sum of its national parts. It can be free of its historical heart of darkness.
Already, the European Union is the partner with the largest development co-operation, but while giving with one hand, the other hand defends an old economic world order. The European Union is the largest market in the industrialised world. It should be the champion of free trade. Social and ecological standards and cultural identity must be developed, but not as an excuse for general trade barriers. That is not accepted inside the European Union. It should be unacceptable around the European Union.
Europe should be a partner to the rest of the world, especially to the Third World, in the search for a new, just and democratic order, promoting common growth and development, a global governance, and a common security.
Just a few years ago recent progress in disarmament would have been unthinkable. Sweden was shocked therefore by a recent decision by a European Union member – France – to resume nuclear testing. We deeply deplore this decision. Future generations should be able to count on our commitment to peace and nuclear disarmament. Europe should not set a bad example to others by turning back to the road to nuclear terror.
Security is no longer solely an issue of military threats. It should no longer be restricted to states, but extended to peoples and individuals. As in previous post-war periods, the norms, institutions and instruments, will have to adapt to the new realities after the cold war. The vision of common security – to replace a terrifying security system with a transparent, co-operative, confidence-building and conceptually broadened security system — is today within our grasp to make a reality.
The Council of Europe is a crucial partner in including democracy, human rights and the rule of law into norms of security, in integrating the social and human dimensions into the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms, in opening member states to a co-operative intervention by multilateral instruments and in addressing security concerns of people and situations that might spill over to conflicts between states.
The common and foreign security policy of the European Union must have better common resources for analysis and initiative. I propose a European Union permanent task force for early warning, including expertise on conflict resolution. It should work closely with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. A Europe immunised against war by institutions and co-operation – settling conflicts by the rule of law rather than by the rule of force – is within our grasp.
I have focused on what is possible; more on what ought to happen than on when it should happen. I wanted to start not with a calendar and a mechanism, but with a map and a picture. The more that can be accomplished in the intergovernmental conference of the European Union, the better. I do not expect enormous revisions, because Maastricht has not been put to the test or pressed to its limits. With true leadership and political will, the current treaty essentially provides a good legal framework, but it needs to be improved in some areas.
I have high hopes, however, that the public debate will focus on what Europe we want. Above all, public debate requires public knowledge about what is going on. Any common effort must be open and transparent, and decision-making must be clear and open to discussion. But what will the citizens see? I hope that they will see leaders concerned with the concerns of many, not with the grandiose designs of a few.
Europe cannot afford to lose momentum. The conflict between federalism and confederalism can largely be solved by a political division of labour. Powerful common institutions – yes, federal – such as the European Commission and the Parliament are needed to initiate processes and legislation; yet decision-making must be deeply rooted in the nations.
I therefore believe in an increased right of initiative for the Commission and the Parliament. I have noticed that Parliament itself speaks of co-decision rather than initiative, but let us keep this idea on the agenda.
I believe that national involvement in decision-making should increase, with national parliaments taking a greater part.
The change in the Council is not in its voting balance, but in its transparency to the citizens. In the far distance when Europe has a common political debate, beyond the language difficulties, with common political parties, the need for national ties will diminish; but as long as that is not the case, it is not up to the small countries to accept no representation but up to the big countries to reduce theirs.
Europe cannot afford to lose itself in endless debates on the theological exegesis of subsidiarity and sovereignty. The greatest challenge to democratic influence in Bonn, Lisbon and Stockholm comes not from Brussels and Strasbourg, but from supranational forces with no geographical identity. We need more of Europe, not less; more co-operation, not less; more politics, not less; more political leadership committed to a vision of the true potential of this magnificent continent.
In essence, it is within our reach to set a stage, and lay the foundations that will make it possible for the newly born of the new century to make much more of their lives than Alfredo Berlinghieri or Olmo Dalco ever did – more than we have ever managed in the twentieth century. It is up to us to look not only to the next elections, but to the next century: to care not only for those who elected us, but for the coming generations.