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by Eurealist on May 13, 2005 04:38PM (BST)

Margot Wallström eventually clears up the controversy over that speech

“I gave a short speech outside the social centre in Terezin. Some newspapers totally misrepresented what I said. There was not one word about the Constitution in the speech! I spoke about the meaning of Terezin for Europeans, how it can influence our thinking about Europe. And certainly such a link Constitution – Holocaust, deviously constructed by one newspaper, I find totally disrespectful to those survivors who were present to attempt to make this connection.

I think it is incredible that a mark of respect for the past and the suffering of the 35, 000 people who died in Terezin should be used in this way. My message was to outline the reality of the history of the European Union and the importance to ensure this never happens again. I stand by every one of my comments in Terezin. I felt also touched by the support I received from members of the Swedish Jewish community.”

But hang on a minute was not the speech released to the press by her own department, and did that published speech not contain the lines:

‘Yet there are those today who want to scrap the supranational idea. They want the European Union to go back to the old purely inter-governmental way of doing things. I say those people should come to Terezin and see where that road leads.’

And have her own department said that she did not use these words because she cut the speech thought lack of time.

Reading the speech it is clear that Wallström was equating the Horrors of the Nazis with the nation state when she says “We also came to this terrible point in our history through nationalistic pride and greed, and through international rivalry for wealth and power. It was precisely to put an end to such rivalry that the European Union was born”

and equating the end of these horrors with the beginning of the EU, Nation state bad EU”