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Vicent Partal

25.09.2014

The shame of Europe

Herman Van Rompuy is still, but not for long, the president of the European Union. Yesterday he dared to answer a question from Carles Boix on the independence of Catalonia with, 'Democracy does not serve to change borders.' We are well accustomed to hearing arrogant stupidities from the insulting mediocrity governing in Brussels, the mediocrity that seriously endangers the construction of Europe, but Van Rompuy’s phrase has gone further than anyone had previously dared before and is simply intolerable.

What does he mean by democracy does not serve to change borders? What does he think the Estonians or Slovenians did? How does he believe the Slovaks form part of the European Union? What would Malta do to have a place on the Council, if it were not for democracy allowing borders to be changed? And Merkel, how would she have governed the Federal Republic, having been born in the Democratic Republic, if democracy had not enabled borders to be changed?

Let’s hope that he was not thinking about what he was saying, otherwise, Herman Van Rompuy would have to explain how he was the person who signed Croatia’s entry in the European Union. Do you mean, Mr. Rompuy, that democracy does not serve for changing borders but that war, ethnic cleansing, mass crimes and the destruction of a country does? Is this the message Europe wants to send to the world? Is my vote worth less than one, a hundred or a thousand corpses in the trenches of Vinkovci, Mr. Van Rompuy? Shame on you! Shame on behalf of the founding fathers of Europe! Shame on behalf of all those who have fought for decades to make the Union a place of peace, freedom and stability.

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