Jean-Marie Cavada (ALDE) . – (FR) Mr President, while the tanks were threatening Tbilisi and the French Presidency was ushering Europe into the role of peacemaker, a role that it ought never to have abandoned, I re-read a Hungarian author, Sándor Márai.

He describes the causes of the calamities that twice destroyed Hungary, half of Europe, and finally the whole of Europe, and shook the world, namely Nazism and Stalinism. History and its attendant violence have now returned and, naturally, the crisis in Georgia, the financial crisis and the social or political consequences that may be anticipated are serious basic elements.

Europe’s political will must be up to the challenge of tackling these events and this new violence, and we are grateful to the French Presidency and all the institutions for having dealt competently with these issues that pose a threat to our stability and peace. Of course, the financial crisis has not been definitively resolved, and is not over. Of course, relations with the Mediterranean have a new institutional framework. One cannot, however, deny the historic change in direction represented by the climate issue. Europe is undeniably becoming a leader, even if not everything is satisfactory.

Europe needs a sustained high-level political leap, above the rights, the lefts and the extreme centres, in order to combat threats that are returning with a violence that we have experienced in the past.

Peoples who do not know their histories are condemned to relive them, says the philosopher. This crisis has reminded us that it is men who make history, not history that makes men.