Il testo integrale del discorso sull'Europa di Cameron

By the same token, the members of the Eurozone should accept that we, and indeed all Member States, will have changes that we need to safeguard our interests and strengthen democratic legitimacy. And we should be able to make these changes too.
Some say this will unravel the principle of the EU – and that you can't pick and choose on the basis of what your nation needs.
But far from unravelling the EU, this will in fact bind its Members more closely because such flexible, willing cooperation is a much stronger glue than compulsion from the centre.
Let me make a further heretical proposition.
The European Treaty commits the Member States to "lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe".
This has been consistently interpreted as applying not to the peoples but rather to the states and institutions compounded by a European Court of Justice that has consistently supported greater centralisation.
We understand and respect the right of others to maintain their commitment to this goal. But for Britain – and perhaps for others - it is not the objective.

And we would be much more comfortable if the Treaty specifically said so freeing those who want to go further, faster, to do so, without being held back by the others.
So to those who say we have no vision for Europe.
I say we have.
We believe in a flexible union of free member states who share treaties and institutions and pursue together the ideal of co-operation. To represent and promote the values of European civilisation in the world. To advance our shared interests by using our collective power to open markets. And to build a strong economic base across the whole of Europe.

And we believe in our nations working together to protect the security and diversity of our energy supplies. To tackle climate change and global poverty. To work together against terrorism and organised crime. And to continue to welcome new countries into the EU.
This vision of flexibility and co-operation is not the same as those who want to build an ever closer political union – but it is just as valid.
My third principle is that power must be able to flow back to Member States, not just away from them. This was promised by European Leaders at Laeken a decade ago.
It was put in the Treaty. But the promise has never really been fulfilled. We need to implement this principle properly.
So let us use this moment, as the Dutch Prime Minister has recently suggested, to examine thoroughly what the EU as a whole should do and should stop doing.
In Britain we have already launched our balance of competences review – to give us an informed and objective analysis of where the EU helps and where it hampers.
Let us not be misled by the fallacy that a deep and workable single market requires everything to be harmonised, to hanker after some unattainable and infinitely level playing field.
Countries are different. They make different choices. We cannot harmonise everything. For example, it is neither right nor necessary to claim that the integrity of the single market, or full membership of the European Union requires the working hours of British hospital doctors to be set in Brussels irrespective of the views of British parliamentarians and practitioners.

In the same way we need to examine whether the balance is right in so many areas where the European Union has legislated including on the environment, social affairs and crime.
Nothing should be off the table.
My fourth principle is democratic accountability: we need to have a bigger and more significant role for national parliaments.
There is not, in my view, a single European demos.
It is national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU.
It is to the Bundestag that Angela Merkel has to answer. It is through the Greek Parliament that Antonis Samaras has to pass his Government's austerity measures.
It is to the British Parliament that I must account on the EU budget negotiations, or on the safeguarding of our place in the single market.
Those are the Parliaments which instil proper respect – even fear - into national leaders.

We need to recognise that in the way the EU does business.
My fifth principle is fairness: whatever new arrangements are enacted for the Eurozone, they must work fairly for those inside it and out.
That will be of particular importance to Britain. As I have said, we will not join the single currency. But there is no overwhelming economic reason why the single currency and the single market should share the same boundary, any more than the single market and Schengen.

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