Speech by Graham Watson MEP to the Congress of PNL, the National Liberal Party of Romania

Speech delivered on Fri 4th Feb 2005

Romanian Parliament, Friday 4 February 2005

You did it! Congratulations to your election victory and to the return of Liberals and Democrats to government in Romania.

Prime Minister Tariceanu, let me once again wish you and your new government all success in the challenging work that lies ahead and assure you and your colleagues of the full support from the ALDE Group in the European Parliament, our liberal democrat network in the Council and all over Europe.

We are proud to have you as our partners in Romania and look forward to an intense political co-operation that will bring Romania into the European Union on schedule, bring Romanian MEPs into our Group in the European Parliament and make sure that your long, hard road of reforms to meet EU standards finally delivers real improvements in the daily life of all Romanians - citizens of our common European Union.

From a Brussels perspective, the return to power of responsible government comes at the 11th hour - your last government managed to conclude the accession negotiations more on the basis of optimistic rhetoric than on actual achievements.

I therefore welcome the very clear signals that your government and your new President have sent;

• to strengthen democracy and the rule of law

• to root out corruption

• to deliver on commitments made in the negotiations, or, as your Foreign Minister Ungureanu put it to the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs committee on Wednesday "this government is not a propaganda government".

I welcome the first set of decisive action taken by your government - the introduction of a flat rate tax rate is a brave move, which will hit the black and grey sectors in the economy and boost confidence for investors.

We in the European Parliament hope to vote Romania's accession in April. I believe that a broad majority in the European Parliament will vote in favour of Romania's accession and I can assure you that my Group, the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe, will do our utmost to help and assist you in this respect.

We know that further efforts are needed, especially in Justice and Home Affairs, Competition and the Environment, but I remain confident that the final problems will be solved and that all will proceed according to schedule.

Let me say a few words about the new Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

We are from two separate European political parties; the ELDR Party, to which the PNL belongs, in which the Prime Minister is a vice President, and the European Democrats, which brings together the French UDF, the Italian Margherita and others.

We have 88 MEPs from 27 different national political parties speaking 16 different languages. We have a common set of political priorities at the European level and a commitment to work together to forge a pro-European phalanx at the centre of Europe's directly elected chamber of representatives.

An alliance, in Europe as indeed here in Romania, is a genuine joining of forces in which 1+1 can make 3, as others are attracted to a new dynamic force in the political centre.

The European liberal democrat family has 6 Prime Ministers who meet before each European Council meeting. We have a strong presence in the European Commission, with 8 Commissioners from the liberal-democrat family out of the 25. We hold the balance of power in the European Parliament, where our votes almost always determine the result. That is increasingly important as our appetite and ambition grows for making a real political impact in running the European Union.

We are the fastest growing political force in the EU because we are the only European force providing credible answers to the challenges Union faces. The left - divided between unreconstructed French or Greek socialists on the one hand and British or Swedish social democrats who are now clearly to the right of centre on the other - has proved unable to sketch a clear road map for Europe. They are still looking for the elusive third way, even as we are making it happen. Meanwhile the right is split along the faultlines of supranationalism versus the nation state and secularism versus the church. The EPP Group is increasingly split, and their tensions are likely to swell our ranks.

What distinguishes us from left or right is a fundamental recognition that supranational challenges require supranational responses. The three big challenges which we currently face - feeding, clothing, housing and providing life-chances for a growing world population when more and more people are pushed into emigration by war or hunger or sheer desperation; or tackling a growing hole in the ozone layer which is melting the ice caps, raising sea levels and changing our life-giving climate patterns; or the challenge of internationally organised crime are challenges which no one country can meet on its own. Liberalism understands that we should only take decisions in Brussels when we need to take decisions in Brussels - but when we need to there is no place for nationalism.

The European Union is changing rapidly, partly as a result of the enlargement but changes were necessary anyway to improve and update the way we work and to respond more effectively to the challenges of the modern world.

I know there are some in your party who want you to leave the Liberals and move towards the right wing to the European People's Party. But I ask you two questions:

• Do you want Mr Giuhandi as your Leader, as the EPP President instructed you?

• Do you want to join a family at war with itself on all the key questions of our age?

Let me -as a friend- give you a piece of candid advice. It might help you unite yourselves if you stay with a united LibDem family.

Let us unite in the vision of the French philosopher Victor Hugo, that the day will come when the only battlefields will be those of markets open for business and the human spirit open for ideas. Let us look forward, with the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, 'to a time when hope and history will rhyme'. I believe the twenty first century is open to our ideas to an extent unimaginable to our fathers or our grandfathers and I welcome Romania to play her role in our common European future.