The European Union will continue to fully support multilateral global governance based on international law, human rights, and strong international institutions.
After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.
We believe that the European Union is facing a truly historic choice.
I will not say the fact that there are no European Union observers at an election means that it will not be fair and free.
The fact that we’re going through a crisis is an opportunity for Europe to be more coordinated and more integrated. We’re actually talking about a European Monetary Fund or euro bonds, about guarantees for countries, about economic governance in the European Union. That shows the strength of Europe.
The savings rate in Italy is high, but the markets do not trust Italy even though it’s the third largest economy in the European Union and the eighth in the world.
This can sound as something naive. But if we are together in this union, it’s because we choose to be one in many things. That’s what makes the European Union experience so challenging and also a model. Why did we do this choice? Because we see that we share a common interest and common values.
The treaties of the European Union say that, once a country has decided to leave, then they are excluded from the treaty after two years, unless there is unanimous agreement to extend that period.
The European Union is not unbreakable; something that is breakable is extremely valuable.
The institutions of the European Union, and the states that belong to this union, each and every one, are paying the price of our failures, hesitations and contradictions. We should each ask ourselves how personally responsible we are.
I think Churchill would have thought it extraordinary that we would have thought ourselves so successful, so powerful, so well thought of in the world that we could afford to give up this extraordinary relationship we have in this great European Union.
One of the reasons why many British voters chose to leave the European Union was because they distrusted European institutions. Of all the many costs of Brexit, this was one I did not foresee: That it could wind up damaging the nation’s faith in its own institutions too.
We Estonians will do what is necessary to join the European Union.
The US and the European Union needs to help in the translation of the demand for democracy into a political will.
The views of the European Union are fully reflected in this text, particularly the key objective of the EU, namely vigorously to address the disarmament of Iraq and to do so within the framework of the UN Security Council.
The European Union is not only a great idea, but it’s also an idea we must keep working on.
I find it unspeakably sad that the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union.
European citizens expect that there will be also a fair system inside the European Union and in the euro, and that’s why we have to have quite hard discipline.
I want us to move as quickly as we can towards a free trade deal between the U.K. and the U.S.A. that would be good for both of us. That would also send a signal to the European Union that there’s a bigger world outside of the European Union, and Britain can manage just nicely.
We want the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union.
The next leader of this country needs to be someone who believes heart and soul that Britain should be outside the European Union.
If the ‘Athens Spring’ – when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts – has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from ‘We the states’ to ‘We the European people.’
Albania, Macedonia and Greece have managed to create a good partnership in the south of the Continent and are making progress in blocking the spread of the conflict. But any spillover could destroy this European-oriented partnership and create problems for the European Union countries themselves.
It’s an uncomfortable fact that leaving the European Union in a way that is true to the referendum result is becoming harder and harder to deliver.
The United States and the European Union do want to have a rule of law, and that rule of law should be for a fair trial. And that fair trial needs to have an impartial jury.
The U.K. is outward-looking, trade-oriented, growth-oriented, and we do not have enough of that storyline, that tradition, that culture within the European Union.
The single currency should allow the European Union, and therefore France, to balance its monetary strength with the United States. It should help us adjust to the development of China.
The European Union needs to reinvent its security system. It needs to break the stovepipes that prevent sharing information, enforcing borders and protecting citizens.
The issue of migration has played a key role in all of our member states, wherever we are. Only we, as a European Union, can convince our citizens that we do have an answer to this – not deny migration, not pretend you can solve it by building fences and walls, not pretending we can solve it by letting everybody in.
It is in our nations’ interests to see a strong European Union with a growing economy, competitive on the world market.
