Hello, welcome to visit Shanghai Forum
First of all I would like to thank you for theinvitation, I am very glad to be here, for me it is a great opportunity. Andmany reasons brought me here, the first reason is the fact that my Universitytoday has a very strong cooperation with Fudan University and I am here tostrengthen this cooperation. Another reason of course is how Shanghai isattractive and interesting for all of us. But there is also another big reason:the title of your event today, the community of common destiny in Asia. And forme it is very important to be here in this event in Fudan., one of the bestChinese universities, with the contribution of Korea Foundation, and with oneof the greatest in Asia, the president of Indonesia as a main speaker.
The fact that Asia today is thinking andworking more and more in sense of community of common destiny is exactly whatwe did in Europe and what we have to do in Europe despite the challenges andthe crisis we are facing today. That is why my speech will try to face and todeal with the problems we are having in Europe today but my conclusion would beon how to interconnect our experience with integration and the great role ofAsia in this very period. It is not by chance that the year 2016, the year inwhich China leads the G20 and in this very days Japan leads the G7. Asia is todaythe center of the world. As in the last century the western countries were thecenter of the world, and we would want to cooperate and work together, this isour mission today.
The European integration history is asuccess. Though there is a growth crisis today, we need to move forward andrevive the attractiveness we possessed sixty years ago. Now we have 28countries in the Union. We have experienced continuous enlargement process thatbrought from dictatorship and poverty countries like the southern countriesfrom eastern and central Europe. Today, we have 28countries 5 million people.Never again will war break up between us. That was and is today the greatestachievement. In the first picture I put here, you could see the two presidentsof France and Germany in the graveyard of the dead. Millions of people losttheir lives in this place just to move across border, now this border doesn’texist. Now it is a land of cooperation. And the second picture shows that,today Europe is working to help and to cooperate even if there are wars, likethe tensions last year between Russia and Ukraine. Let the place be a land offreedom. European market is the richest market in the world integrated with ourborders. The European integration is the only way to keep European countriesimportant in the world.
Look at the list of the ten most importanteconomic countries in 2050, in this list you will find many Asian countries.There were not so many countries in the same list 2010. Education is veryimportant. And in area for young people, we are here in the kingdom of youth,of students. Erasmus is the great project to help European students and notonly European students, 3 million, that is enormous for Europe, have theopportunity to experience this Erasmus project and this mobility for youth anduniversities. And the single currency is a complement to a single market,though it faces a threat today because of economic crisis.
The European integration reduced poverty. Isaid that here because China gave a great contribution to the world in thisperiod. So the big values shared by the European integration and the Asiancommunity of common destiny: peace, poverty reduction, prosperity, future ofconnection and integration, the enlargement of education opportunities foryoung people. We have to work together on these main issues.
The first challenge is the economy. We arefacing the big crisis, the big debt crisis, the raise of debt in Europe and theloss in terms of growth. The second big challenge, the challenge of immigration,you have here the maps of all the routes. The discussion about what is going onin Europe. The Mediterranean, the Latin’s thought of the name “mare nostro”meant to say the Mediterranean is a sea of life, and it has become a sea ofdead in the last two or three years. The first big tragedy was in Lampedusa,2013. I was prime minister in that time and we tried to give dignity to 366refugees who died in the Mediterranean sea. It was the first tragedy of a longlist of tragedies. We cannot accept that the Mediterranean becomes the sea ofdeath. We have to work to make solutions to the immigration problem, aframework of solutions that the EU is engaging in finding out.
We are facing the deepest crisis ever fromthe Second World War in terms of immigration today. And the third bigchallenge, the problem of terrorism and radicalization. Because of theterrorism in Europe, European people are worried about their future. Thatresulted in the rise of populism, Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant parties, whichis also our big challenge today. How to convince our people that the future isstill a future of integration? And how to convince our people that nationalismis not the answer? Nationalism is not the solution. The big challenge in themonth of June, the 23rd, the referendum in the UK will decide whether it willstay or leave. Here you have the two leaders, the former mayor of Londonleading the leave campaign, and the prime minister of UK leading the remaincampaign. Today the last polls are saying that remain is pooling way much morevoters against leave, we hope so. We want desperately, strongly, and warmlythat UK will stay on board of European integration. It would be decisive forthe future of Europe. And it would be decisive for the future of Europeanintegration towards the world.
It is a key moment for European history inthis very period. So, my conclusion is about nationalism and multilateralism,and the relationship between Europe and Asia is decisive in this very topic,exactly because of the title you chose for this great event. 2016 is a year ofbig challenges for multilateralism, as the G20 meeting will be held in China. Ihad the opportunity to attend with the president to the G20 meeting in Russiain 2013, and I am strongly convinced and I am one of those thinking that G20 isa great and important place to strengthen, , it is a way for sharingresponsibilities. And China’s leadership within the G20 has the possibility toengine up G20 again as it was at the beginning, to be the place where to findsolutions to the common crisis. And the G20 decides more than the G7, becausethe G7 is only the place where western countries meet.
But western countries are no more thecenter of the world, G20 is the place where we can meet, we can listen to eachother, we can find common solutions on the main issues today. This is why ourexpectations on the Chinese leadership of G20 this year are so high. China’sresponsibility today to lead the G20 and to make the G20 more influent anddecisive is so crucial. We have to invent a way to make the G20 central in theworld of tomorrow. And about the same time, in this year, UN will find a newSecretary General, after Ban Kim Moon, coming from South Korea with bigleadership. Now the choice of a man or a woman will be made, and September willbe the moment in which we decide. And the UN is also active on many topics,such as migration, development, and environment. Only communication andcollaboration on multilateral level is efficient, when our problems are unavoidable.
The EU and the cooperation in the Asiancommunity is a key factor. We need to cooperate on environmental protection.Environment is the future of our families, of our children. Environment is theplace where our children, our families are going to live together in thefuture. We need to cooperate on combating nationalisms. We need cooperation towork for integration in Asia, in Europe and for integration and common workbetween Asia and Europe. The environment is exactly the demonstration on how importantthe cooperation is. This all will due to our children. Their future depends onthe choices we make today.
Thank you.
(This article is edited based on the recording and has not been reviewed by the speaker.)
