GM Citizenship - No thanks says Allister!
05 April 2006
During a debate in the European Parliament on proposals to spend up to 300 million euros on promoting European citizenship, DUP MEP Jim Allister launched a stinging attack on both the concept and the waste of the money involved.
In the course of his remarks, Mr Allister said:-
"Citizenship and statehood go together. Hence, the desire of the promoters of the European project to produce European citizenship. True citizenship doesn't need money thrown at it to make it real or desirable. Loyalty to it is born of the heart, not the pocket. Surely we could find better uses for 300 million euros than promoting this contrived notion of European citizenship. At the end of all this wasted expenditure, the French will still want to be French and the British, British and no-one but the political Euro-elite will prize citizenship of Europe above that of their own country.
Why then do we have to try so hard to defy the natural order and create a synthetic substitute when, in our Member States, we can all enjoy the real thing? Genetically modified (GM) may be for some, but not for me."
