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"They missed a good opportunity to keep their mouths shut (ils ont manqué une bonne occasion de se taire)."
"It is not really responsible behaviour, it is not well brought-up behaviour…infantile…dangerous."
"These countries are very rude and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too quickly with the Americans. If they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU, they couldn't have chosen a better way. After all, when you are in the family, you have more rights than when you are asking to join and knocking on the door."
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Jacques Chirac, French President from 1995. Speaking at an emergency EU summit on Iraq, 17 February 2003, about Eastern European countries backing the US's position on Iraq, rather than France's.
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"[The French] have missed a good opportunity to shut up. I went [to Israel] as the prime minister of Italy. There's no way France can issue criticism over something that was the sole right and responsibility of the Italian Prime Minister."
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Silvio Berlusconi, media monopolist and Prime Minister of Italy 1994 and from 2001. Response to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who said Berlusconi had "not satisfied the European position" by holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during a visit to Jerusalem and not meeting Yasser Arafat. 17 June 2003.
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"We argue about fish, about potatoes, about milk, on the periphery. But what is Europe really for? Because the countries of Europe, none of them anything but second-rate powers by themselves, can, if they get together, be a power in the world, an economic power, a power in foreign policy, a power in defence equal to either of the other superpowers. We are in the position of the Greek city states: they fought one another and they fell victim to Alexander the Great and then to the Romans. Europe united could still, by not haggling about the size of lorries but by having a single foreign policy, a single defence policy and a single economic policy, be equal to the great superpowers"
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Harold MacMillian (Supermac), British Conservative Prime Minister 1957-1963. The Listener, 8 February 1979. It was under his leadership that Britain belatedly applied to join the EEC - an application that was vetoed by Charles de Gaulle (and there's gratitude for you!).
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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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