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"[Italy joining the Euro at its launch] was a decision imposed from on high and the public had no choice in the matter."
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Umberto Bossi (b 1943). Creator and leader of Italy's ultra-right separatist Northern League, sometime ally of Berlusconi's Forza Italia.
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"The Europe of Maastricht could only have been created in the absence of democracy."
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Claude Cheysson, French Foreign Secretary 1981-1984. Quoted by Sir James Goldsmith, speaking to the Federation of small businesses, Newcastle, 27 June 1996. It's not recorded whether Cheysson was bothered by this or not.
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"[The result was] disgraceful … we should never have given the vote to women and truck drivers."
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Danish official working at the European Commission, on hearing the news that Danes had voted no to membership of the euro in September 2000.
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"Your problem [in Britain] is that you are afraid of saying clearly to European citizens just what the European Union is."
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Jean-Luc Dehaene, Vice-President of the European Constitutional Convention. Comment to Peter Hain, Labour Minister for Europe. Quoted in Le Monde, 13 April 2003.
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"There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty."
"There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears I need hardly say are completely unjustified"
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Ted Heath, British Conservative Prime Minister and noted Europhile. White Paper on the implications of joining the EEC, July 1971. Proven by later release of documents to be outright lies.
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"There will not be a blueprint for a Federal Europe"
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Ted Heath, British Conservative Prime Minister and noted Europhile. Speech in the House of Commons, 25 February 1970 in run-up to EEC entry.
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"There is no danger of a single currency."
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Ted Heath, British Conservative Prime Minister and noted Europhile. EEC membership information leaflet, 1975.
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Sissons: "...the single currency, the United States of Europe: was that on your mind when you took Britain in?"
Heath: "Of course, Yes."
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Ted Heath, British Conservative Prime Minister and noted europhile, and Peter Sissons, BBC journalist and presenter. Question Time with Peter Sissons, 1 November 1991.
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"We must not give in to mob rule".
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Michael Heseltine, aka 'Tarzan', charismatic europhile darling of the Conservative left, and matricidal mace-wielder. One-time Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister. Explaining his opposition to holding a referendum on Euro entry in a BBC television documentary.
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"In the time-scale Blair is thinking of, Britain will not love Europe ... when the day of judgement comes, fear must stalk the land."
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Hugo Young, celebrated leftist political journalist, Guardian, March 2000. On how to get the British to vote to join the Euro.
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"It is reasonable to ask whether such complicated and nuanced issues as the Nice Treaty ... are suitable subjects for referendums in the first place."
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Independent Newspaper editorial, after the Irish refused to ratify the Nice Treaty in a referendum. |
"The creeping unification of Europe ... since the time of Jacques Delors [has been] managed by the bureaucrats from Brussels behind the back of the continent's population, behind the back of the citizens of individual member states"
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Václav Klaus. Second President of the Czech Republic, Former Czech Prime Minister and Finance Minister. Article in the European Journal, Dec 2003.
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"Europe's nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation."
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Jean Monnet, Founder of the European Movement. Former Cognac salesman and bureaucrat at the League of Nations. 30 April 1952.
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"In this area, we need much more - let's call it coordination and cooperation to soothe British feelings - than before. [The real destination] will have to be described in different language."
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Gerhard Schröder, German Chancellor from 1998 who does NOT dye his hair. Interview, 2002, acknowledging misgivings among the British electorate about the euro's political underpinnings.
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"No government dependent upon a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifice that any adequate plan [to build the EU] must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into their abandonment of their traditional economic defences..."
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Lord (Peter) Thorneycroft, Privy Councillor, Conservative Party Chairman 1975-1981. Chairman of 'Design For Europe' Committee, 1947, quoted by Bill Jamieson in Britain Beyond Europe.
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"I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account."
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Raymond Barre, Mayor of Lyons and French Prime Minister 1976 - 1981 under Giscard d'Estaing.
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If you have an authenticated quotation on Europe, the EEC or the EU that you think should be listed here, then email me .
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