Tony Blair's vision for Europe: economic modernization can save our societies.

• Position: VERBATIM

When then-Prime Minister Tony Blair went to the podium of the European Parliament in June 2005, he spoke at one of the darkest hours in the history of the European Union. The assembly was reeling under the shock of seeing the draft Constitution repudiated by voters in France. When Blair finished speaking an hour later, the parliamentarians rose to their feet in applause, galvanized by the British leader's apparently undimmed enthusiasm for the potential of European unity to help Europeans safeguard their societies. Blair did not disguise his formula for success: governments needed to change and liberalize their economies or else see their societies succumb to extremism as they suffocated under the pressures of globalization.

The speech was memorable in another important way. Blair used the occasion to attack the standard rhetoric by many Europeans that Britain--under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then under his own government--had devastated its own people and destroyed its own social conscience through harsh capitalism and the absence of any sentiments of traditional solidarity. Blair did not gloss over the fact that his government had shunned the option of joining the euro because it wanted to pursue more flexible, innovative economic policies. But he challenged the cliche that British people are the worse off for it.

And, of course, he emphasized the British view that economic vitality goes hand in hand with international stature in every domain from political and military clout to development.

In the end, the people who were probably most disappointed by the prime minister's speech were those among his own followers in Britain who were fervently pro-European. Their view was that Blair himself failed to live up to his own stirring words and vision because he never really took on the political challenge of Britain's hard-line anti-Europeans. Part of the explanation for that is, as an earlier prime minister famously said, "events." In this case, it was the Iraq war and the prime minister's support for it that fatally compromised any chances he might have had to rally other Europeans to his vision. That fate does not diminish the vision outlined in the speech, excerpted here.

Whatever else people disagree upon in Europe today, they at least agree on one point: Europe is in the midst of a profound debate about its future ... The issue is not between a "free market" Europe and a social Europe, between those who want to re treat to a common market and those who believe in Europe as a political project. This is not just a misrepresentation. It is to intimidate those who want change in Europe by representing the desire for change as betrayal of the European ideal, to try to shut off serious debate about Europe's future by claiming that the very insistence on debate is to embrace the anti-Europe. It is a mindset I have fought against all my political life. Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.

I am a passionate pro-European. Since being Prime Minister I signed the Social Chapter, helped, along with France, to create the modern European Defense Policy, have played my part in the Amsterdam, the Nice, then the Rome Treaties. This is a union of values, of solidarity between nations and people, of not just a common market in which we trade but a common political space in which we live as citizens. It always will be. I believe in Europe as a political project. I believe in Europe with a strong and caring social dimension. I would never accept a Europe that was simply an economic market.

... There is not some division between the Europe necessary to succeed economically and social Europe. Political Europe and economic Europe do not live in separate rooms. The purpose of social Europe and economic Europe should be to sustain each other. The purpose...