Geoffrey Van Orden (PPE-DE). – Mr President, I wish to offer some cautionary words, particularly to the new Obama Administration. Over the last 60 years, the United States has had a range of attitudes towards European integration. Naturally, it sees this from the perspective of an outsider and may even imagine – erroneously, I believe – that it is similar to America’s own historical experience. This is the view encouraged by the dominant federalist tendency in the EU institutions. The danger is that US interlocutors accept the EU’s own narrative as fact, rather than as a story presented as a documentary but with a lot of misleading and fictional content.

The US should understand that many of us believe that the EU is heading in the wrong direction and that its aspiration to create a state called Europe does not reflect the wishes of our citizens, rightly attached as they are to the sovereignty of our nations and their ability to elect and remove governments.

Neither is it in the interests of the United States for the freely given commitment of many European countries to coalition to be usurped by a differently minded European Union.

I have to say that I have much respect for Mr Millán Mon and I can approve many of the sentiments in his report, but not its main thrust, which is to elevate the role of the EU as an institution as our unique spokesman in dealings with the United States.