Hans-Gert Pöttering

During a conference reminding of  the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hans-Gert Pöttering declared on October 14, 2009:

 I.

In my inaugural address as President of the European Parliament on February 13, 2007, I made the following remark: “We shall be judged on how we set the newly achieved European unity on a lastingly good and safe path. Leadership is expected of us politicians…We must concentrate on essentials…We need a Europe that believes in itself, that draws its strength from its values and that wants to, and can, be a good partner in the world.” Today I want to add: A Europe that believes in itself and draws its strength from its values is a Europe sensitive to its past, sensitive to its totalitarian darkness and proud of the victory of freedom.

 

Today, we have come together to commemorate, to analyse and judge. We have also come together to look beyond our own moment and discuss the challenges ahead. Let me add three remarks to this event for which I applaud the Government of Lithuania.

 

II.

My first point: We shall never forget the historical truth. Poland and Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria, and of course also Croatia and Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro have always belonged to Europe. These were never countries of a different continent. Those who define Turkey as a European country also add this EU candidate country to the list of European nations; after all, Turkey was a founding member of the Council of Europe. As far as the post-communist countries which I have mentioned are concerned, their claim “to return to Europe” meant in the end to join the European Union as today’s embodiment of a supranational community of values, a Union based on law and democracy.

 

The oppressive nature of communist totalitarianism has prevented freedom and democracy from flourishing in these countries before 1989/90. The current development of political culture across Europe cannot and should not extinguish the memory of this historical evil. All victims of totalitarian rule in the name of a communist ideology deserve to be remembered. Younger generations will live their free life more freely if they do not forget about this dark chapter of their respective national history. Totalitarian communism did not appear without origins and it did not disappear without consequences.

 

As bad as totalitarian communism was the totalitarian racism which the German Nazi regime practised. Nazi totalitarianism replaced the class struggle by a struggle among races. Its ideology was as inhuman as the communist ideology. Both totalitarian ideologies destroyed the dignity of man. They were evil by nature. Sometimes, historians and political scientists discuss whether the two totalitarian ideologies can be compared and be put on the same level. I agree with the theory of totalitarianism which was a strong feature in my own studies at Bonn University when I had the privilege of studying with Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Karl Dietrich Bracher, two of the leading political scientists that shaped the theory of totalitarianism.

 

One of the practical applications of totalitarian ideology was the cynicism in foreign policy which eventually led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was not just another pact driven by the classical concepts of European power politics. It was an inhuman and cynical pact which only two like-minded immoral regimes can arrange.  Les extremes se touches. The Baltic countries, Central and South Eastern Europe suffered first. Eventually, also the nations that were hold hostage by the power of totalitarian politics suffered.  

 

For the victims of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the desire “to return to Europe” was a political program based on cultural commonality. It was also a geopolitical choice. Only a supranational, law-based European Union can guarantee respect for smaller countries and people. In the final analysis, we are all minorities in the European Union hold to be together by the desire to advance the common path of our mutually interdependent destiny.

 

 

II.

My second point: We should recognize the relevance of the European Parliament in promoting European unity. In 2004 and in 2007, a dream came true for ten post-communist countries. Along with Malta and Cyprus: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the EU, followed by Bulgaria and Romania. The enlargement process was intense and multi-dimensional ever since the communist dictatorships had been toppled in those countries. Membership in the European Union was the dream for all post-communist societies. But the European Union is not centralistic, not a technocratic machinery undermining cultural and national diversity. To the contrary, the European Union provides the frame for the flourishing of each member states’ individuality and its respective diversity. The European Union, this became the experience of all member states that had overcome communist totalitarianism two decades ago, helped them to safeguard and strengthen their individuality. But the European Union needed to vote unanimously to make membership in the EU possible. Some countries were more enthusiastic than others.

 

In this process, the European Parliament was the strongest possible advocate of EU enlargement. Almost all my colleagues in the parliament supported the enlargement process from the very beginning. We demanded that the process should be inclusive and we accompanied the negotiations between the Commission and the candidate countries with a strong and visible parliamentary dimension. My French colleague Alain Lamassoure was the first to propose that EU enlargement 2004 should coincide with the elections to the new European Parliament. Thus it happened and our 2004 Parliament was directly elected by citizens from Lisbon to Tallinn, from Dublin to Ljubljana. We should not play down the moving nature of this event.

 

 

III.

My third point: We will give testimony to our European diversity in unity by establishing the House of European History. The main decisions have been taken and I am optimistic that the House of European History will be opened in 2014, right at the time of the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. the House of European History will give great credit to all those traditions that we hold together across the European Union. It will also pay tribute to the victims of totalitarianism and the heroes of the peaceful revolutions of 1989.

 

The peaceful revolutions brought us closer together across Europe, and of course also inside the European Parliament. When new colleagues from the former candidate countries joined the European Parliament in 2004, many of them had already become familiar with the structures of the European Parliament. Many had made already contacts with colleagues in the European Parliament and they had partner parties on which they could rely. After joining the European Union, the members of the European Parliament from the former candidate countries joined the political families that constitute the life of this parliament. This has enriched all political groups in the European Parliament and it has influenced the political developments in all new member states. European integration is, and will remain, a two-way street.

 

Membership in the European Union is not an abstract process. It does not take place as an anonymous operation. Membership in the European Union is driven by political actors and continues to be shaped by political actors. The election of Jerzy Busek as President of the European Parliament is the strongest possible indicator that the European Parliament belongs to us all in the EU. Before many other European institutions we have overcome the mental division between “old” and “new” members in the European Parliament.

 

It is in this spirit that the European Parliament has decided to establish a House of European History here in Brussels. I have the privilege of chairing its political board. Distinguished historians from all over Europe are currently helping us to establish a unique place of recollection and memory, aimed at supporting the future path of European integration. The House of European History, once it opens its doors, will attract thousands and thousands of visitors, especially young visitors who come to Brussels. They will see more than just meeting rooms and buildings. They deserve to feel the pulse of European integration politics and its intractable connection with the many features and experiences of European history. Temporary exhibitions will make it possible to have a close cooperation with museums all over Europe.

 

Ladies and gentleman, the European Parliament represents the one, united yet diverse European Union. This will continue to be so. It is the least we can do to remember and to honour the victims of totalitarian politics and cynical power politics that have brought so much destruction, oppression and sorrow to our continent in the past. We commemorate the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but we do this by commiting ourselves to a good, peaceful and democratic future in Europe.