DIFFERENT VOICES

Date: 02/05/1996

“Our grand vision of the future makes no sense if we do not tackle employment problems.”

Commission President Jacques Santer in his opening address at a two-day round table intended to launch his 'confidence pact' to fight unemployment.

“We are not going to put on a show.”

Economics Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy rejecting suggestions that the campaign to sell the Euro would be accompanied by Hollywood-style razzmatazz.

“Europe only has one try. Once the currency union has started, it cannot go astray again. A failure like that would be a heavy burden for economic development and political integration in Europe.”

German Bundesbank President Hans Tietmeyer spelling out the cost of failure for the EMU project.

“Frankly, I find it incredible that politicians who come from a legal tradition in which judicial precedent has, for hundreds of years, played a crucial role, should suddenly find it shocking that, in a European context, it is the Court of Justice which is the final arbiter of legal interpretation.”

Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn delivering a veiled attack on the UK for calling for new limits on the power of the European Court of Justice.

“Some suggest we could just negotiate a trading relationship with Europe. But frankly, the idea that if we were outside the EU we could somehow become a trading haven on the edge of Europe with all the benefits of that vital market of 370 million - while others fix the rules without any regard at all to our national self interest - is cloud cuckoo land.”

UK Prime Minister John Major rejecting suggestions from some within his own party that the UK should consider leaving the Union.

“We must consider the consequences of the fact that, seven years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we still do not have a vision about what the future could be.”

Andras Inotai, head of Hungary's World Economic Research Institute, warning that delays in creating a strategy for EU enlargement could raise the cost of expansion and make it extremely difficult to reap the potential benefits.