Paolo Gentiloni Quotes

We need to move forward, from the common currency to the banking union to a common financial policy and, in the middle-term, to a common foreign and security policy. That will take time, because we need to figure out how to deal with those countries that don't always want a more tightly integrated European Union.

Ireland has a role to play in making the E.U. united and strong.

It's political glue inside Europe to keep it together - the euro is the best thing going for it since the creation of the common market.

We've got to demonstrate why European unity and integration, our vast single market, our single currency, equip us with the strength to embrace globalization.

We must build a kind of United States of Europe.

It's not only the British voters who have doubts about European cooperation. There is skepticism in many other E.U. countries.

Part of the concept of the euro zone was to establish a common market. The banks were going to bank across all their countries like we bank across states. But that concept got killed for a whole bunch of reasons that I won't get into. That was a good concept, by the way. It may yet return, because there are huge economies of scale in banking. That's another thing people don't quite get.

There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection... The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit.

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.

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.

I do not separate France from Europe.

One has to explain to people that the EU in this form is the answer both to 1945 and to the 21st century, in a dramatically altered world with new heavyweights, and that Germany benefits from the continued integration of Europe in political, economic and societal ways. And, of course, that means the Germans will have to pay.

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.

The principal achievement of Europe is peace, which we often forget about as it has become so taken for granted by Europeans.

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

Limitless enlargement of Europe means the death of political Europe.

The creation of a United States of Europe is a necessity if one considers the economic and technical situation.

United States of Europe

We are part of the community of Europe, and we must do our duty as such.

German and European unification are two sides of the same coin.

To avoid the trap of Europe fragmenting on the economy, security, and identity, we have to return to the original promises of the European project: peace, prosperity and freedom. We should have a real, adult, democratic debate about the Europe we want.

At German unification, we were lucky to get so much help from West Germany. Now, we have the good fortune of being able to help each other in Europe.

Our biggest threat is not too much Europe, but too little.

I see us very much at the heart of Europe. We are founding members of the single market; we are founding members of the euro.

The most important thing is that Europe has to remain united.