European Institutions Quotes

We must seek to persuade member states and institutions that better regulation in Europe does not mean cutting health and safety in the workplace, nor does it mean dismantling social standards.

In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions? Can we justify a commission that gets ever larger? Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multibillion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven't worked?

I have the most profound respect for the Department of Justice and the FTC. We in Europe are a younger and I would say junior institution to the historical antitrust experience of the US.

Economically and politically, Germany is extremely stable. There are countries with functioning governments whose institutions don't work. My only concern is about Europe. There's a risk we will run out of time. We have been blessed with a pro-European French president, but we are also approaching the next elections for the European Parliament in 2019, and it will be important for pro-European parties present a credible answer to the anti-Europeans on the left and the right.

Europe has shown how government can be organised in a network. Its institutions both compete and co-operate and include a directly elected parliament that does not appoint the executive, independent judiciaries and a complex set of relationships between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament.

People feel that European institutions are remote and bureaucratic, run by shady cosmopolitan elites. Britain is not absolutely exceptional because if you look at the opinion polls, those sentiments are now quite widespread also in continental Europe.

The problem is: When two governments or institutions in Europe hold differing opinions, it is immediately a crisis.

I would go to the European institutions, I would demand for the French people four sovereignties: territorial - our borders; monetary and budgetary; economic; and legislative. Either the European Union says yes to me, or they would say no, and I would say to the French, there is no only other solution but to leave the E.U.

U.S. has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here.

Businesses will only invest in Greece if three conditions are fulfilled. First, there must be a clear commitment to the euro. No businesses will invest if they have to fear that Greece will leave the euro zone at some point. Second, the Greek government must be prepared to work together with European institutions in order to restructure the country.

In the American colonies, the main problem of liberty has been solved, demonstrated and practiced in such a manner as not to leave much to be said by European institutions.

I am in favor of the European institutions being led for the next two-and-a-half years as they have been thus far. We need stability.