EU quotes

"[There's no way Britain could accept that] the most vital economic forces of this country should be handed over to an authority that is utterly undemocratic and is responsible to nobody"

(British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in response to the Schuman Plan 1950)



"Parliament must...resign itself to becoming a rubber stamp."

(Lord Kilmuir, advice to Edward Heath, December 1960)



"We should frankly recognise this surrender of sovereignty and its purpose."

(Edward Heath, Hansard, 17 November 1966)



“America would welcome it if Britain should apply for full membership in the [EEC], explicitly recognising that the Rome treaty was not merely a static document but a process leading towards political unification.”

(George Ball Under-Secretary of State for JFK 1961)



"The single market was the theme of the Eighties; the single currency was the theme of the Nineties; we must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political unity".

(Romano Prodi, 13 April 1999)



"Let's imagine Europe is a football club and you join, but once you're in it you can't say let's play rugby". (French foreign minister Laurent Fabius)



"We perform the duties of freemen; we must have the privileges of freemen ..."

(Chartists 1836)



"The [Lisbon Treaty] is indeed a tidying -up exercise, it sweeps the rest of our sovereignty under the Brussels carpet".

(Lord Pearson)



"The Government’s guiding principle was...to swallow the lot and swallow it now."

(Sir Con O’Neill, the British diplomat who led the UK’s negotiations for EEC membership under Heath)



"I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe."

(Kenneth Clarke, Conservative Chancellor in International Currency Review Vol 23 No 4 1996)



"The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes"

(President Gorbachev)



"Europe's power is easy to miss. Like an 'invisible hand', it operates through the shell of traditional political structures. The British House of Commons, British law courts, and British civil servants are still here, but they have all become agents of the European Union implementing European law. This is no accident."

( Mark Leonard co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think tank )



"We need to build a United States of Europe with the [EU] Commission as government".

(Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner 2014)



"A supranational union is a multinational political union where power is delegated to an authority by member states".

(Wikipedia)



“A coup d’état by a political class who did not believe in popular sovereignty”.

(Tony Benn on the European Communities Act 1972)



"Once [WWI was over, countries] went back to rules & customs of parliamentary democracies. I felt out of my depth".

(Jean Monnet, Father of EU')



"EU Parliament is incredibly responsive to lobbying institutions, but is unresponsive to public opinion".

(Gisela Stuart, Labour MP 2009)



"Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises".

(Jean Monnet, Father of EU')



"I have lived in your future ….and it doesn’t work".

(Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky on the EU)



"Determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe".

(Treaty of Rome 1957)



"This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union..."

(Maastricht Treaty 1992)



"This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe".

(Lisbon Treaty 2007)



"Never out on principle; never in on principle [regarding EEC membership]. It depends on the terms and whether it is best for Britain".

(Labour leader Harold Wilson, May 1975)



"Now we've signed it - we had better read it"

(Douglas Hurd, former Foreign Secretary on the Maastricht Treaty)



"The supremacy of Community Law when in conflict with national law is the logical consequence of the federal concept of the Community"

(H P Ipsen, 1964 - 9 years before the UK joined)



"[Norway] held a referendum [on the EU] that went the wrong way"

(Douglas Hurd, former Foreign Secretary on the Maastricht Treaty)



"Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals we dare not present to them directly. All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and diguised"

(Valery Giscard D'Estang. on the Lisbon treaty)



"The Tories have been indulging in their usual double talk. When they go to Brussels they show the greatest enthusiasm for political union. When they speak in the House of Commons they are most anxious to aver that there is no commitment whatever to any political union."

(Labour MP Hugh Gaitskell, October 1962)



"It means the end of a thousand years of history."

(Hugh Gaitskell - 1906-63, on a European federation; speech at Labour Party Conference, 1962)



"The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State."

(Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister)



'If it's a Yes we will say "on we go", and if it's a No we will say "we continue".'

(Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Council)



“The substance of the Constitution is preserved. That is a fact.”

(German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the Lisbon Treaty)



"I have read some of [the Lisbon Treaty] but not all of it."

(Caroline Flint, former Minister for Europe)



"The primary reason why Britain entered into [EEC] negotiations was political, political in its widest sense."

(Edward Heath, lecture at Harvard, 1967)



“They must go on voting until they get it right.”

(Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission)



"If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union."

(Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky)



"The European Union is a state under construction."

(Elmar Brok, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs)



“I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account at all,”

(French PM Raymond Barre)



“I believe neither the French nor the Dutch really rejected the constitutional treaty.”

(Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg)



“Let’s be clear about this. The rejection of the constitution was a mistake that will have to be corrected.”

(Valéry Giscard d’Estaing)



“The 'no' votes were a demand for more Europe, not less.”

(Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission)



"I don’t want an ‘in or out’ referendum because I don’t think out is in Britain’s interests.”

(David Cameron, who won't hold a referendum because he thinks he'll lose)



"...there are constitutional innovations."

(Mr Patrick Jenkin, former Tory MP during 2nd reading of European Communities Bill 1972)



"In Brussels one says "member state". You may imagine it means the same thing as country or state, but "member state" does not. Note that adjective. Member modifies state. Like "wooden" modifies "leg". The noun stays the same, but the essence of the thing is gone."

( Mary Ellen Synon, Bruges Group Annual Conference 2013)



"No government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked…"

(Peter Thorneycroft, former Tory MP)



"[Bailouts are] expressly forbidden in the treaties by the famous no-bailout clause. De facto, we have changed the treaty."

(French Europe minister Pierre Lelouche)



"The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights... against which a subsequent act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail"

(ECJ Case 6/64)



"[The EU Constitution represents] a visible move in only one direction...from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism...and this should be explained to the people of Europe"

(Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus)



"European integration is fortunately a train moving too fast for anyone to stop it."

(Vaclav Havel, Czech Politician)



"The European Parliament is a caucusing body that is incredibly responsive to lobbying institutions, but it is completely unresponsive to public opinion."

(Gisela Stuart, Labour MP June 2009)



“Millions of people in this country will feel as I do, that legislation passed in this way, with no consent, cannot command the assent of the country and would lack moral and constitutional validity."

(Douglas Jay MP during 2nd reading of European Communities Bill 1972)



"It is an illusion to think that [EU] states can hold on to their autonomy."

(Hans Tietmeyer, head of the Bundesbank 1991)



"...within ten years 80% of our economic legislation, perhaps even fiscal and social as well’ would come from the EU."

(Jacques Delors, President of EU Commission 1988)



"The huge cost of the Common Agricultural Policy to taxpayers and consumers far outweighs any benefit to them..."

(Memo by MAFF to House of Lords European Communities Committee 1995)



"...we must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political unity."

(Romano Prodi, President of EU Commission 1999)



"The day of the nation state is over."

(Roman Herzog, German president, 1996)



"The European system of supranationality comes at the cost of democracy."

(Lord Leach of Fairford)



"The [EU] Council of Ministers will have far more power over the budgets of member states than the federal government in the United States has over the budget of Texas."

(Jean-Claude Trichet, current head of the European Central Bank)



"One must never forget that monetary union, which the two of us were the first to propose more than a decade ago, is ultimately a political project. It aims to give a new impulse to the historic movement toward union of the European states"

(Giscard d’Estaing, who drafted the EU Constitution 1997)



"The process of monetary union goes hand in hand, must go hand in hand, with political integration and ultimately political union. EMU [economic and monetary union] is, and always was meant to be, a stepping stone on the way to a united Europe"

(Wim Duisenberg, first president of the EU Central Bank)



"Once the interlude of [WWI] was over, [countries] all went back to the rules and customs of traditional parliamentary democracies. I felt out of my depth."

(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')



"We need to build a United States of Europe with the [EU] Commission as government."

(Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner 2014)



"We had imagined a political 'grand design', a new international order..."

(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')



"I like the English style of life. I feel more at home here in London"

(Tintin creator, Belgian born Herge)



"We are not forming coalitions between States, but union among people"

(Jean Monnet, 'Father of Europe')



"The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of tomorrow."

(Jean Monnet, 'Father of Europe')



"That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European super-state was ever embarked on will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era. And that Britain . . . should ever have become part of it will appear a political error of the first magnitude."

(Lady Thatcher, Statecraft)



"There is no question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty”

(Ted Heath)



