Roel von Meijenfeldt speech
A very special and warm welcome to our guests of honour, Commission President Barroso, to former President Chissano of Mozambique, to the Patrons of the European Foundation present here today: first of all its chairperson former President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, former European Commission Vice President Viscount Etienne Davignon, and to Mr Bernard Bot, former foreign minister of The Netherlands. We received regrets of not being able to personally attend the launch today from patrons Richard von Weiszacker, Jacques Delors and Uffe Ellerman Jensen. They sent their best wishes for a successful launch today.
The European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership has been established in recognition that democracy is the vocation or raison d´etre of the European Union and, secondly, that the values underlying democracy are universal indeed. Our European prosperity and stability are founded on democratic systems of government of which there are 27 different political systems within the European Union today, all democratic but differently shaped as outcome of historic evolutions and revolutions.
The European Union itself has been labelled the greatest intergovernmental success story in human history and as such forms a magnet for countries surrounding the EU to follow its path to democracy and eventually become members. But how can that experience be shared with those people struggling to build their democracies in parts of the world for which EU membership is not a perspective?
We know that democracy cannot be exported, that it has to grow from within to be sustainable. But whereas it can not be exported, it can be supported. Based on experience obtained in providing democracy support at national levels, the European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership wants to bring this experience together at the European level and closer to the policy makers at the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council. We hope that it will eventually contribute to and result in a European Democracy Consensus complementary to the European Consensus on Development that was agreed in 2005 .
The initiative to establish the EFDP comes at a time when new steps are undertaken to strengthen the European Union foreign policy instruments agreed in the Lisbon Treaty. The European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership is not an official EU agency, but a contribution of European political and civil society in bringing expertise and greater flexibility to the shared objective of assisting the building of democracy within third partner countries of the European Union.
Today is the official start of a two-year establishment phase to allow the EFDP to engage in dialogues with our partners in and beyond Europe to develop common agendas for the advancement of democracy.
The EFDP is an open concept, not finished in recognition that democracy itself is never a finished product. It is always work in progress. Like Europe also, the process of building Europe is not finished. It remains objective and process at the same time. Democracy is a noun and verb at the same time. The EFDP plans to follow this open model for its own evolution in the years to come. It hopes to become a network of associated organizations throughout the European Union engaged in providing democracy assistance abroad in a distinct European approach.
Ladies and gentlemen, the international context for democracy support has become more complex during the past years because autocrats in this world are better organized in resisting transformations to democracy. Following the wave of democratic transitions - an impressive total of 90 countries since 1974 - that ended with the rose and orange revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, some academics now observe that the world has gone into a democratic recession that requires concerted action to redress.
The context is also more complex because democracy does not only come about by organizing elections, how important they are in themselves, or by importing institutional blueprints from elsewhere. Today, it is better understood how much it takes to build a sustainable democratic political system and culture through peaceful transitions to make democracy work and to deliver on the expectations of the people.
To contribute to that process and to add to Europe's assistance and voice in advancing democracy, the European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership is launched today.
To officially initiate the Foundation, it is my great honour to introduce former President Vaclav Havel. With the formation of Charta 77 and the role he played in the peaceful transition from communist rule to democracy in his country and the subsequent leadership he provided first as president of Czechoslovakia and later as president of the Czech Republic, President Havel, also a prominent author and playwright as we know, has become a source of inspiration for many people today struggling for democracy be it in Belarus, Burma, Tibet, Cuba or Zimbabwe. He once stated: We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible, if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality. He lived that dream to see democracy become reality.
President Havel may I invite you to take the floor?