Toespraak van minister Timmermans bij het congres Hello World! Reflections on the Netherlands

Toespraak | 02-09-2014

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

The European Union, the euro and I have one thing in common: we were all born in Maastricht. Does that make Maastricht a European city? Perhaps. But much more than this, Maastricht is a European city on account of its history, its people and its ambitions for the future. The sediments of Europe’s history can be found in every street and square. Roman, Merovingian, Carolingian, Spanish, French and Dutch landmarks abound. Layer upon layer of European sediment that has formed us; that also determines who we are. Look at our local language: it’s clearly based on Dutch, but with strong French influences (krevat, foersjet, telleur). The traditional way of saying ‘thank you’ is: bedaank en merci, a perfect example of our linguistic and cultural duality.

Maastricht did not choose to be a European crossroads, it simply was and is. For over 6,000 years people have been coming and going, sometimes peacefully, mostly bearing arms and causing havoc. Maastricht came to illustrate the need for balance in power politics: make sure no one becomes too powerful; make sure there is always another contender; make sure the powers that be are at a distance and relatively content, and you can go about your business without too much outside interference. Its choice to join the Dutch Republic and later the Kingdom of the Netherlands was, in my view, inspired by the belief that this would enable Maastricht to be what it wanted to be. And isn’t this, at the end of the day, the same mechanism that inspires so many European nations to choose to be part of a common European destiny as members of the European Union? Because the EU does not take away who and what we are. Rather, it enables us to be who we want to be in a world full of challenges.

What defines us as a nation is not our physical borders. What defines us is the values that bring us together as a community. The Dutch nation is much older than the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but in the last 200 years this Kingdom has come to be seen by all its inhabitants as the receptacle of our values, of who we are. The Netherlands became our home, our ‘Heimat’.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands has fulfilled the promise enshrined in this unique document that more than any other defines our nation: the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe of 1581. Only those who respect the unalienable rights of the people have the right to rule us. He who does not respect those rights has essentially vacated the throne and abandoned his people. And lost the right to rule. This was a truly revolutionary concept in 1581; today it is a self-evident part of all rule-of-law-based democracies of the European Union.

‘Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit’, the first words of the German national anthem, define our deepest aspirations as European nations. Bundespräsident Gauck personifies this promise of justice and freedom. He inspires me, because he showed great personal courage while living in an oppressive regime that treated his father with great cruelty. He resisted the temptation of collaboration, and he never ceased to speak his mind and demand freedom. He is one of those rare treasures in European history, together with Václav Havel, who spoke out when there was no hope of change and who, by their actions, tore down a wall that was the symbol of Europe’s shameful 20th-century legacy. The name Joachim Gauck, for me, will always be linked to this unique and beautiful German word that is ultimately stronger than the most powerful weapons: Zivilcourage.

Bedaank en merci.