Common Policy Quotes

Common foreign policy is completely unnecessary. The various European countries have widely differing priorities, goals and prejudices. It would be wrong to force them all to follow the same course.

In order for the E.U. area to stay together, they needed to form a banking union, which meant they needed to have a common credible deposit insurance guarantee for everybody in the E.U. area.

I know myself, from my own background, the E.U. depresses employment and destroys jobs. My father had a business destroyed by the common fisheries policy.

Cabinet government rests on the principle of collective responsibility: Ministers debate and argue in private but then hammer out a common policy which they all agree to support.

No matter who uses chemical weapons against people and organisations, the international community must formulate a common policy and find a solution that would make the use of such weapons impossible for anyone.

A two-speed Europe will not be a strong Europe. The idea of making decisions and policies in a narrow circle, disregarding smaller EU members, will make it hard to engage them to commit to a common policy, which will weaken the union.

The E.U. cannot give up on common solidarity. The idea that every country does its own thing, and history and geography decides whose turn it is - whether Greece or Italy or Spain or, who knows, even Poland if there's a crisis in north-eastern Europe - that just can't be. There has to be a common policy.

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.