Remembrance Day: Sassoli (EU Parliament), “we all have a duty to preserve democracy”

“Remembering is a duty so that what has happened cannot happen again”. In his speech at the Remembrance Day ceremony at the European Parliament, David Sassoli remembered the victims of the Nazi genocide, saying: “We must also remember that those who experienced that horror have left democratic and European institutions in our custody. The construction of Europe is not only an extraordinary political response to the horrors of National Socialism but it has also been one of the fundamental engines of the process of integration between democratic countries”. “Our history teaches us that renewed nationalism will not protect us from pitfalls because the sacralization of borders as well as the search for a pure and unequivocal identity will only produce new enemies”. The European Union “was born as a symbol of openness, cooperation, awareness of a common destiny. It was born from a great vision, from a courageous ideal that drew strength from such a huge tragedy as the one caused by the Second World War and the horrific Nazi designs. This is why all of us Europeans must share responsibility for that custody: the custody of democracy and Europe”. “Because Europe is the only reality that can allow us to rediscover that vocation that has led us to build a space of democracy in which law is the reference by which we regulate relations between our Member States, between our citizens, and tomorrow, with those states that aspire to live with us”.
Valentina Bombelli