Public appearances

THE PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA
Address by the President of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kucan
Official visit of the President of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kucan to the Republic of Moldova

Chisinau (Moldova), 10 July 2002


Mr President, Honourable Deputies,

I am delighted to have this opportunity to address your high house. I see in this a clear signal of the new times and the great changes in the European continent. With barely foreseeable rapidity, the old fences and barriers are coming down between different parts of the former political Europe. The concepts understood thus far of the European west and east are becoming clearer, and are losing their ideological substance and prejudices. The noble values of the European democratic political tradition, the market economy and social state, cultural, spiritual and religious pluralism, tolerance and respect for national and other differences are becoming permanently rooted in all European countries, irrespective of their position on the map, including Slovenia. This also includes Moldova, in which interest is growing in Slovenia, along with a strengthening of the desire for enhanced and expanded mutual relations.

Since the end of the twentieth century, the globalised world has been opening up great new prospects and opportunities for the multilateral cooperation of highly diverse and numerous political and national entities on all continents. The processes of mutual dependence in such a world are unstoppable. Any attempt at political isolationism would have little strength but do great harm to such a state. A similar fate sooner or later awaits any attempt at political uniformism and monolithism, whereby one state or group of states would want to establish in the world only its own political and military order, and only its own rules and criteria of behaviour for others. In the globalised world it is only political, cultural, spiritual and economic polycentrism that have a future. This world already has, and in the future will have even more markedly, powerful centres of development for human civilisation. This is an final demand, linked to the pluralism of civilisations and cultures that are not divided into several parts or less worthy parts. Peace, stability and development in such a world are possible only through dialogue, cooperation and healthy competition between these civilisations and world political and economic centres. Any other model of relations would lead to human catastrophe of unimagined proportions – or, to liken it to the Bible story of the great flood, in a situation of nuclear war, there would not even be a Noah’s Ark to save us.

Our current global world has an important new quality on the political level. This is the great number of small and medium sized countries, all members of the UN, that have great developmental ambitions and do not want to see a repetition of the story from European history, where the power and borders of all countries on all continents were determined by the political superpowers, usually following renewed, bloody wars. We may recall just the First and Second World Wars, which are closest to us in their political consequences, or the Turko-Russian War and the peace of San Stefano, which also sealed your own fate. After these ravages, the great powers determined the political status of peoples of both Slovenia and Moldova. I see in small nations cooperating in a great opportunity for a balancing of political and other relations in the future democratic world of coexistence of different political entities.

At the end of May this year in Slovenia we held a meeting of presidents of sixteen Central, Eastern and South Eastern European countries. This meeting, in which the esteemed president of your country, Mr Voronin, also participated, may be judged as one of the signs of the new times and possibilities on the European continent. We discussed Central Europe as a linking factor between the European west and east, and we found consensus on the fact that there should be an expansion of the area of European values founded on respect for human dignity, human life and rights, and we therefore committed ourselves to enlargement of the EU and NATO, which are the bearers of these values in the east and south-east of Europe. We took a determined stand that in the new, common European home, symbolised by the European Union, there must be sufficient room for all European countries that desire it. For this reason we also said that the borders of Europe extend as far as the rule of these rights and the respect for them.

This very year is of great importance for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, for it should mark the end of the accession negotiations for ten new EU members, and the invitation of several new European countries to join NATO at the summit this November in Prague. Slovenia is hoping for positive decisions in both cases. Through such decisions, a new integrative quality will emerge in Europe, and in the coming years this will open up great opportunities for those European countries that are not yet a part of this year’s round of enlargement. This new quality, despite the great difficulties in the internal reorganisation of the EU and particularly regarding the future European common agricultural policy, indicates that the integrative processes on our continent are in effect irreversible. In any event, they are incontrovertibly essential, if Europe wishes to wield in world politics a political influence appropriate to its economic might on the decisions in the global management of the world. The justifiable belief that the further enlargement of the EU is irreversible demands that the new EU give to European countries that are not members a specific, substantive perspective, including a timetable, for their inclusion. Allow me to recall that, at the same presidential meeting in Slovenia, our closing statements expressed the firm belief and expectation that, immediately after the current round of enlargement, the EU authorities would propose new cooperation and stabilisation agreements to the countries of the European east and south-east that wish to join, whereby the processes of internal reform, adoption of European legal norms and economic liberalisation will be stepped up considerably. Only in this way will we be able to move creatively beyond the consequences of the former European political and bloc divisions, and prevent the emergence of new divisions and their accompanying discrimination and economic and social differences between European peoples.

In the history of Europe, full of conflict and military conflicts, the killing of civilian populations and also the arbitrary aggression of totalitarian dictators, three fundamental factors played a destructive role in creating divisive gulfs. The first of these was the arrogant political rule of the large countries, or superpowers, each of which demanded for itself a monopoly in ruling Europe, regardless of the means that were used to effect this. This then led to wars, in which the greatest suffering was that of small nations and states, if indeed these nations even had states. A united Europe, bound to its values and by an even distribution of political power among the small and large states can prevent this in the future. The second factor may be sought in the unresolved or poorly resolved national questions; in particular, in the methods of resolving these questions by the principle of Blut und Boden, through territorial conquest and the national suppression of the members of other nations. The declaration and exercising of the priority rights of one nation was fatal especially to the lives of those nations that lived in multinational state formations. The German Herrenvolk was an extreme version of this. A united Europe of equal nations, bound to the special protection of ethnic minorities in multiethnic states, can eradicate aggressive nationalism and the lust for hegemony by a leading nation. I see the third factor in the profusion of ideological, religious and cultural exclusivity. How many lives have been lost and personal tragedies have resulted from the veneration of one ideology as the only deliverance? How much suffering in the history of European humanity have we seen because of the crusading marches of religions that pronounced themselves the only true beliefs with the calling to redeem humankind? And how much human degradation and spiritual apathy did we experience owing to the declaration of one and only one possible spiritual and cultural civilisation as holding greater value? We can still find the traces of these European historical tragedies today. For Slovenia the clearest lessons were in the latest bloody clashes and genocidal destruction in the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1999. Yet we may hope that all these European historical experiences will be sufficiently instructive for the new generations of all countries and nations, that they will encourage a relinquishing of all the remaining European divisions, and that in the future we will regard all national, religious and spiritual diversity as a treasure and an opportunity for mutual enrichment.

Slovenia and Moldova each have their own histories. And yet there are certain similarities that cannot be overlooked. Up until 1991, the peoples of Moldova and Slovenia had the status of peoples within greater, multinational state formations. In the centuries before this, we aspired in vain to political emancipation, so that through statehood a people might become a nation. In our efforts at self-preservation, we continuously ran up against the possessiveness of the political elites of other, larger nations, which in the final analysis wanted to assimilate us. Nevertheless, we lived to see 1991, when both Slovenia and Moldova became independent countries and members of the UN. Now we have our statehood, and it is primarily up to us what kind of life our citizens have and will have. We are satisfied with the path that we have taken in these past eleven years. We have concluded demanding processes of economic, political and social reform. We stand before accession to the EU and NATO. And justifiably we expect much from membership in both integrations. This is primarily the economic, political and military security of our citizens, a new developmental impetus for our economy and the opportunity to share in the decision-making, as an equal alongside the other EU and NATO members, on the future image of Europe and the world. Behind us there is the hard work that we were able to accomplish chiefly because of the prevailing values of consensus, dialogue, tolerance and respect of every kind of difference, including national. We are aware that we had a better starting position than did Moldova. We understand the difficulties you face, and support you in your search for solutions. We wish to share this with you, inasmuch as we are able. And this includes the experiences we have gained in our negotiations with the EU and NATO. For this reason, I believe that our current meetings will bear new fruit in economic, political and substantive cooperation.

Thank you for your attention.


 

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