Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 11 September 2013 - Strasbourg

State of the Union (debate)

  Martin Callanan (ECR). - Mr President, can I first of all thank Mr Barroso for the unsolicited electoral advice for my party. It is a bit rich coming from the unelected head of the European Commission to give us electoral advice on how to prepare for elections, but I suppose that is typical of him.

He has spoken for what I totted up to be a total of 55 minutes this morning and of course he played his usual trick of having something for everyone. There was a little bit on a commitment to subsidiarity, which I welcome; I would like to see it in action but nevertheless I welcome it; and of course all the usual guff about more integration being required, more Europe being the solution to our problems, accompanied also by the usual scaremongering that somehow the alternative to ever-closer integration is the trenches of the First World War. Come on, Mr Barroso, nobody seriously believes that any more.

As usual, your speeches this morning were long on rhetoric but your time in office has been very short on action. I really believe that those of us who believe in less Europe and less integration are actually starting to win the arguments in Europe now. Even Mr Schulz, in his interview with Reuters yesterday – I was amazed – said, if they quoted you correctly, Mr President, that the EU cannot do everything and what you can do locally you should do locally. Well, of course we welcome the sinner that half-repenteth but, never mind, we should appreciate from where this comes.

Mr Barroso, concerning your grand rhetoric, the journalists in the Press Room have a terrible habit of playing buzzword bingo with your phrases to see whether you come out with your favourite phrases. I have to say my favourite from this morning which I wrote down is that you said ‘we have to shape a new “normal”’. I hope that makes sense in Portuguese because I really do not know what it means in English.