Haris Pasovic Quotes

The EU Constitution sets a path towards the elimination of nation states and the emergence of a European state in the strictest sense of the word. I'm definitely opposed to it… The EU isn't a loving family of European nations where everyone altruistically cares for everyone else. Various interests clash on various issues, and all kinds of coalitions are struck to push through specific solutions

But the European Union does not have a concept of national identity. It was set up to abolish that idea, not to abolish German national identity because that was trying to save itself.

The European Union cannot be compared to the United States. America is a nation, but Europe is not. Europe is a continent of many different nations with their own identities, traditions and languages. Robbing them of their national democracies does not create a European democracy - it destroys democracy in Europe.

Europe is my home, Europe is my continent. Europe is where we live. The European Union is a political bureaucratic organization that took away our identity and our national sovereignty. So, I would get rid of the European Union and be a nation-state again.

Nations are an historic reality in Europe. They all have different histories, and they joined the EU at very different times and under widely differing circumstances. I was mayor of Warsaw for three years and always in favor of Poland joining the EU. But I also experienced how we had to implement EU regulations that were completely inappropriate to our situation.

The European Union arose on an economic foundation, and it turns out that even this is not a solid base. Cultural identity has been neglected.

Any people has a right to self-determination, and now in Europe the process of diluting national sovereignty in the framework of a united Europe is more accepted.

Perhaps our own opposition to even the level of European integration we have now, let alone any more, is well known.

Europe is a collection of free countries.

If the euro becomes a factor promoting Europe's drifting apart, then the foundation of the European project is destroyed.

After choosing monetary union, further political union and workable governance in Europe was always going to be necessary.

Europe has such an expansive history.

I'm a great supporter of the European Union. I didn't support entry to the Euro, not because I'm against it in principle but because I didn't think it was economically right for Britain. But that doesn't make me any less pro-European.

Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression.

'Federalism', in the context of political and media usage in Britain, has come to mean the creation and imposition of a European superstate, one centralised in Brussels.

I believe that Europe without Britain at the heart will be less reform-driven, less open, less international Europe.

Without Britain, Europe would remain only a torso.

Having viewed Europe as an extension and projection of itself, France now finds Europe developing a mind and identity of its own which embraces France but is not controlled by France.

I have been supporting the European Union, but we are still a work in progress. We have to become more of a United States of Europe. We should talk about electing a president of the E.U., rather than having one selected from the heads of government.

People feel that the EU is a one-way process, a great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change.

People feel that the EU is heading in a direction that they never signed up to. They resent the interference in our national life by what they see as unnecessary rules and regulation. And they wonder what the point of it all is. Put simply, many ask 'why can't we just have what we voted to join - a common market?'

Germany has always stood for an E.U. of the 27 countries. But in light of Britain's continued resistance to further integration steps, as we saw with the fiscal pact, there are limits to my optimism in this regard. It's quite possible that we will have to create the new institutions for the euro zone first.

The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction - that 'Europe' has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.

If there is no real European federation and if Germany is restored as a strong and independent country, we must expect another attempt at German domination…. The only reasonably hopeful possibility for avoiding … this is some form of federation in Western and Central Europe.