01/06/2016 Press Release - Speech by President Donald Tusk at the European Business Summit
Thank you for having me here tonight.
It's a good coincidence that at this difficult - perhaps even dramatic - time in the history of the European Union, I have the opportunity to address business people, entrepreneurs and managers. Because today Europe really needs the features that are typical of your environment: responsibility, pragmatism, common sense and numeracy skills. Your sense of practicality has told you to concentrate on the issues linked to your activity. And rightly so, because in fact it is you who decide about things that are crucial for ordinary people: employment, wages, the quality of our everyday environment. Today, however, we must all together think about the challenges of a more general nature. Whether or not we rise to these challenges will affect not only the economic future of Europe, but also its very existence as we know it. At stake is the liberal-democratic order, along with whole catalogue of values and principles, which have become a foundation of Western civilization.
Key to this civilisation was - and still is - a multidimensional notion of freedom as well as respect for rules established precisely to protect that freedom. The birth of that system was directly linked to the needs and desires of those who hundreds of years ago were creating European trade and entrepreneurship. It was for them the merchants, producers, the sailors for whom freedom and efficient law enforcement were vital. And it was the economy that determined the establishment of a liberal-democratic order, at the same time becoming its main beneficiary. The history of this part of Europe with its trade centres of Antwerp, Brussels, Bruges and Amsterdam, is the best illustration of this.
Please forgive me the historical remark: I am not mentioning this because I am a historian by profession, but because of the necessity of the moment. Simply speaking: from many angles - and for different reasons - the foundations of democratic capitalism as well as Europe's political and axiological position are being questioned. If we fail to interpret these threats accurately, if we make political mistakes or commit the sin of omission, we will not survive in our current shape. That's why it is so important that Europe's business circles do not leave politics to the politicians alone, because that would be gambling in its purest form. It is politics - whether good or bad - that will ultimately decide the future of our continent, including your fields of activity. Politics has returned to the stage. And whether you like it or not, you must also play a part in it, because it is also your right, your duty and your interest to keep a watchful eye on the politicians. Both here in the European institutions, and in national capitals.
Let us focus on two issues. One, we must at all costs maintain and strengthen the political unity of the West. I mean the West in a political - not geographical - sense. We discussed this at the G7 Summit in Japan, among other things. Today it is becoming increasingly clear that a new international order may not necessarily follow our rules. Above all it is about the rule of self-restraint of the most powerful.
Today, respect for the rules, agreements, and the institutions which supervise those rules, is not entirely a common phenomenon. And in a world without rules, the most brutal and insolent will be the ones who win, while the weaker and decent ones will lose. If we want to globally and effectively counter events such as violations of territorial integrity, vide Ukraine and Russia, territorial claims at sea, as in South-East Asia, breaching world trade regulations, as in the overcapacity in the steel industry, to mention but a few issues discussed at the last G7 Summit, we must stand united. A world which respects the standards present in the EU and the US, in Canada and Japan, and this is not a full list, is a better world than the one defined by a lack of rules, the use of force and short-term interests. That's why it is so important that in our debate about TTIP, CETA (the agreement with Canada), or EPA (with Japan), we remember about the strategic and geopolitical dimensions of those agreements.
page source http://www.consilium.europa.eu/
