Ο αυταρχισμό στο εσωτερικό οδηγεί στην επιθετικότητα στο εξωτερικό, όπως αποδεικνύει η περίπτωση της Τουρκίας και τώρα η ρωσο-ουκρανική κρίση. Το Ευρωπαϊκό Λαϊκό Κόμμα με επέλεξε να το εκπροσωπήσω στην Ολομέλεια της Κοινοβουλευτικής Συνέλευσης του Συμβουλίου της Ευρώπης (ΣτΕ), στη συζήτηση για το ρόλο του ΣτΕ στην ευρωπαϊκή ασφάλεια. Επέλεξα να μιλήσω από τον Κεραμεικό, τον χώρο όπου πριν από 2500 χρόνια, ο Περικλής εκφώνησε τον περίφημο Επιτάφιο λόγο του, τον διαχρονικό παιάνα της δημοκρατικής ιδέας του κράτους δικαίου και των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων, θεματοφύλακας των οποίων είναι το ΣτΕ στη σύγχρονη Ευρώπη.
Ακολουθεί ολόκληρη η ομιλία μου:
Good morning, Mister President.
I hope you can hear me well.
I speak to you from downtown Athens. I participate in the ceremony for the Holocaust Memorial Day as the president of the Greek-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Committee together with many of my colleagues and the president of the republic. We here in Athens, the ancient cradle of democracy, say out and loud like every other nation in the world: never again.
Never again, we, the Council of Europe as an institution that was founded in the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War, no horror was greater than the Holocaust.
Now to the topic under discussion both as a politician but also as a student and scholar of international affairs, it is well established and well documented the strong link, the strong bond between authoritarianism at home and aggression abroad.
Usually regimes that do not respect the rights of their own citizens they violate human rights and the rule of law. Often they turn aggressive vis-à-vis their neighbourhoods in their international behaviour.
Allow me to say that we in Greece have a good experience of that with our neighbour to the East, Turkey, with its authoritarianism and its aggression as it continues to occupy half of Cyprus and continues to threaten with war Greece. But the causality goes the other way as well. It’s not only that authoritarianism breeds aggression, it’s also that aggression abroad creates the environment for the strongest, most serious violations of human rights.
During war, during conflicts, we have seen it time and again: human rights are massively and to an unprecedented degree violated. So, although our Council deals with human rights and the domestic situation it cannot avoid to discuss and to be interested in what happens internationally abroad.
And today we have a serious crisis at hand in the Russian-Ukrainian border. We are very concerned. We are in favour of the full sovereignty and unity of Ukraine for the benefit both of Ukrainian people and all its neighbours, and we believe that Russia is an inextricable part of Europe and bound, as a result, by European values and norms as a result.
Thank you very much from the ancient cemetery of Athens where Pericles gave his famous funeral address 25 centuries ago. I salute you and commend you on this very important initiative to have this debate today.
Thank you.