European Membership Quotes

We will not try to out-Ukip Ukip. Labour is not going to offer false solutions, such as leaving Europe.

Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity - and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe.

I don't think that our European Union membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations.

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.

If Turkey wants to join Europe, it will have to become a European country, and that might take a long time.

There are of course economic advantages to having Turkey as a member of the European club. It's a developing country with a large, reasonably well-trained labor force at a time when the European birth rate is dropping at a catastrophic rate and Europe is graying. It offers opportunities for greater trade and investment to the benefit of both Turkey and Europe.

There is no upside for the U.K. in Brexit. Only costs that can be avoided and advantages to be seized by remaining in Europe. No one should have to pay the Brexit tax.

If the U.K. were threatening to withdraw from Europe, I would certainly want Scotland to be out of that.

Membership in the European Community, now the European Union, has enabled Ireland to re-find its sense of participation - cultural, political, social - at the European level. I think that also opens up possibilities for Ireland as a European country to look outward - to look particularly, for example, at countries to which a lot of Irish people emigrated, to our links - our human links - with the United States, with Canada, with Australia, with New Zealand. And to look also, because of our history, at our links to the developing countries.

Romania and Bulgaria were particularly irresponsible. If they wanted to diminish their chances of joining Europe they could not have found a better way.

If the E.U. is to survive... it is based on the fact that for every community that belongs in Europe, there is a place in Europe.

We cannot turn our backs on Europe. We are part of Europe.

We know the costs of Europe. What are the benefits?

I think the longer Britain is in Europe the better.