By Francesca Ross - 30th April 2009
Parliament's EPP-ED group leader Joseph Daul has launched his party's election strategy with a blistering speech warning against political "merchants of illusion".
Daul used the launch in Warsaw on Wednesday to assert that his group aimed to be "the driving force of Europe" and criticised "populists who wish to board us up in an ivory tower".
His speech formed part of a congress in the Polish capital 29 and 30 April to adopt the EPP's manifesto for the coming elections to the European parliament.
He told the conference, attended by EPP prime ministers, leaders of the opposition and representatives from all the member parties and the EPP associations, the party has a "duty to warn Europeans against those merchants of illusion, those media Greens and attractive speakers who, thank God, nobody has yet given the responsibility to lead a government".
He also attacked Europe's socialists as being "strong on slogans, but whose only successful leaders are those who follow policies of the centre right".
The centre right would not "promise the impossible" but "build a strategy which looks far afield, which takes courageous steps, which safeguards the future, and which allows Europe to benefit from the wind of growth from the very first breeze".
He said, "The result of our common effort will guide us to victory, of that I am certain… it will also help us for our legislative and political priorities in the coming years."
The big issue on which this election would be fought "is the one which concerns all of our citizens," he said, referring to "the current global financial crisis and its impact on our societies".
Daul blamed his political opponents for the state of the economy, saying, "One of the principal problems in the financial sector was the lack of regulation and supervision." This, he argued, was a policy which had emerged under the administration of former US president Bill Clinton.
He went on to praise prominent EPP members for what he considered to be their comparative skill in dealing with the situation.
Referring to the recent G20 summit, he said, "It was Europe, and more specifically the centre right, strong with its model of a social market economy which has influenced the world, and introduced rules to a system which has become crazy."
Daul argued that any other approach would be a failure saying, "The eurosceptics lie when they say that Europe is weak in the face of globalisation.
"And the socialists are no better when they claim that it is by nationalisation, and by a policy of subsidy that we will come out of the crisis."
Daul called on delegates to mobilise and make citizens understand "that voting on 7 June is to express a choice on the type of society they wish to have".
Appealing to the party's traditional core voters he said Europeans need to know "the economic model of the free market that we alone defend, is the one which will give back confidence to consumers, to those who put money aside, and to investors, while at the same time protecting the weakest among us".
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