Romano Prodi Quotes

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.

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

Europe is and will be a Union of States.

The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time.

It [the Euro] is a decisive step towards ever closer political and institutional union in Europe. Above all, it is political.

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

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.

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

We must build a kind of United States of Europe.

[Europe needs] the efficiency and … simplicity of a single state.

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

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

There's going to be a need for a system of cooperation within the continent of Europe including the U.K. that covers both economic and political cooperation.

It is always said that Europe is a project of the elite. That's incorrect.

(A unified) 'Europe' is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt.

It's not attractive at the moment to vouch for the European idea. I still do it, because I believe nothing would be better for our continent.

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.

We have to give ourselves a constitution which marks the birth of Europe as a political entity.

I really think in the Commonwealth of Europe you should have Russia. I listed a hundred countries that would be in it and it would then be a really European United Nations.

A united Europe is our Continent's only chance to avoid falling off the world's radar. The heads of government of Germany, France and the United Kingdom also know that their voice is only heard internationally because they speak through the megaphone of the European Union.

The EU must take on new responsibilities. And these new responsibilities call for intensifying the integration process.

Now that Serbia is moving towards integration into Europe, the opportunities to get closer cooperation may very well exist.

Our task is nothing less than the creation of a new constitutional order for a new united Europe.

Without a tighter union, Europe will disintegrate