Romano Prodi Quotes

Europe is and will be a Union of States.

This much is true: When we created the euro, it wasn't possible to create a political union along with it. People weren't ready for that. But since then, they've grown more willing to go in that direction. It's a process, one that is sometimes laborious and sometimes slow. But it's important to keep the populations involved.

Europe has a lot of strength. We need to pool that strength, and I am very much in favour of that - more of a deeper political union.

United States of Europe

The E.U. should want Turkey to be part of it.

I think us leaving would have an enormous and bad effect on the rest of the EU. The EU would respond by deepening integration and becoming more of a 'political project'. It would not only be damaging ourselves but also the kind of Europe we want.

I am going to leave the future of Europe to the Europeans.

The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation.

You can't build Europe against anyone.

I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too. So I speak as British prime minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part.

The euro is our common fate, and Europe is our common future.

The E.U. is the world's fastest growing democratic body.

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

Europe is difficult to coordinate, and our main deficit may not even lie in this area of finance and economics, but in foreign and security policy. We have a leadership problem because we are still 27 different members who have still not decided on how to work with each other based on what we used to call a European constitution.

Europe needs an engine, and the Franco-German motor has provided that when the two nations have converged on important topics during critical periods. But that partnership shouldn't be a directorate for other EU members.

I said, yet again, for Germany, Europe is not only indispensable, it is part and parcel of our identity. We've always said German unity, European unity and integration, that's two parts of one and the same coin. But we want, obviously, to boost our competitiveness.

I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic.

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.

'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.

Integration is the most important asset Europe has, and the key component to European integration is the euro.

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

I defy anyone - and I have said this to the Germans - to build a solid, articulated, and viable Europe without France's consent.

The European Union is the world's most successful invention for advancing peace.

I believe that in Europe, we have a collective leadership.

Peace in Europe can only come through union in one economic system. The United States of Europe are overdue.