Reijo Kemppinen - 28 March 2007

I want to take this opportunity of expressing our appreciation of the European Movement's work. They have carried the torch for the European idea. And it has often been a lonely task.

There's one year that's uppermost in our minds today — 1957. It was the year Ghana and Malaya became independent. It was the year Sputnik was launched and space became the new frontier of all mankind. It was the year John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time. And of course 1957 was the year the Treaty of Rome was signed.

It didn't cause much of a stir at the time. As with the Beatles, it took some time for the music to filter through.
But once it did, the Treaty of Rome became something we couldn't have lived without — even if we take it for granted now.

A couple of weeks ago you may have seen Manchester United play against a European Eleven at Old Trafford. The match was organised to celebrate half a century of Manchester United competition in Europe as well as to mark the signing of the Treaty of Rome. Commissioner Siim Kallas, the former Estonian Prime Minister, was there, and he was very keen to meet Bobby Charlton, whom he had only ever seen on TV. He told me how he used to watch Finnish TV because it was the only western TV channel they could receive behind the Iron Curtain.

Enlargement has meant an awful lot to them. It's meant an incredible opening-up to the world. The breaking-down of so many barriers. It's meant democracy and freedom. Freedom to watch the TV channels you want and travel abroad wherever and whenever you want. We should never underestimate what European integration has meant — reconciliation between former enemies, the underpinning of peace and democracy, and the creation of new economic relations.

For people in the UK, the benefits may seem less tangible. Especially in political terms. Of course, there are the three million jobs the government attributes to UK membership of the EU — at a cost per person in 2006 of about one espresso coffee a week. When the UK joined in 1973, it was called the "sick man of Europe". Now it's the world’s fifth-largest economy. I suspect the three million jobs and the EU's single market — the largest in terms of GDP in the world — may have something to do with that.

Now we know that the EU budget isn't a kitty: it funds our common policies. So you can't expect to get out exactly what you put in.

I couldn't put a precise figure on the value of so many things the EU does — such as food safety and disease control and standards for drinking water and cleaner beaches. Such as entitlement to health care abroad thanks to the European Health Insurance Card and the right to draw one's pension anywhere in the EU. Such as cheaper air travel since the EU opened up air transport to competition. I couldn't put a precise figure on technical benefits such as the GSM standard developed by EU-funded research that allows mobile 'phone systems to talk to each other across Europe. But we can say it has become the globally dominant worldwide standard and 82% of the world's mobile users have phones based on it.

I can't put a figure on such political benefits as the underpinning of democracy across Europe, the stabilisation of peace in the Balkans, EU humanitarian aid to tsunami victims in the Indian Ocean and EU development aid across the world's poorer countries.
Yet we finance all of these — and much more — through the EU budget. And I would venture to say we all get more back in intangible but very real benefits than we put in.

The EU is the world's foremost aid donor. That means we can all feel proud of our collective contribution to aiding people across the developing world. For that espresso coffee a week, you don't just get three million jobs in the UK. You get a world role and a voice in global politics and the satisfaction of knowing we can defend and promote our shared values on the world stage. Because together our 27 member states are stronger than any one is — or could be — individually.