The Queen’s speech to the European Parliament in 1992 was significant for both its timing and content, as Europe had transformed faster than anyone had anticipated. Reconciliation and reform were the hallmarks of the decade. The great hopes for peace on the island of Ireland were to be realised. Today, this speech is especially poignant as the government threatens the Northern Ireland protocol and fractures relations with our closest allies. As the UK becomes more isolationist, the contrast with the EU’s commitment to renewed enlargement and solidarity with Ukraine, could not be greater.
The 1990s kicked off with rows over EU reform and linked referendums in Ireland and France on the Maastricht treaty cementing democratic reforms, the fall of the Berlin wall, German reunification, war in Yugoslavia, and the great hopes for reconciliation and peace on the island of Ireland. Deep divisions in the Conservative Party over EU reforms persisted even in the wake of the success of British calls to create a European single market. Six months before the single market was launched on 1 January 1993, the UK held the presidency of the EU Council.
The Queen’s speech
In September 1992, the European Parliament celebrated its 40th anniversary. But, for the UK in the EU, 1992 marked the start of making a reality out of the single market.
Queen Elizabeth II’s speech revealed a desire to put the UK at the heart of efforts to shape a future Europe at a turning point in its history and on the brink of enlargement. The central theme is the UK’s support for sustaining the Community’s democratic values in welcoming Austria, Finland and Sweden as new members and preparing for new members from Eastern Europe to join as the Soviet bloc disintegrated.
Warm words, warmly received
The warmth with which the Queen’s speech was received by members of the European Parliament is evidenced in the transcript of the speech, which records that her remarks were greeted with applause twice during the speech and “loud and sustained applause” at the end. Extracts of the speech on YouTube show that this was a standing ovation.
The words themselves are a warm and inspiring recognition of the contribution of the European Community to prosperity, peace, diversity and democracy in our continent. In encouraging the Community to enlarge and allow new members to join, she echoed the view of the UK government.
However, from what we know about the late Queen, we can imagine that much of the speech was heartfelt on her own part. At the very least, her experience and understanding of the horrors of war will certainly have informed her appreciation of a unique organisation set up to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.
A European family, dwelling in peace, safety and freedom
The Queen began her speech by recalling the vision of her first prime minister, Winston Churchill, of a “family … structure” that would see an end to European wars:
Mr President, in a celebrated speech at Zurich in 1946, Winston Churchill described ‘the tragedy of Europe’. He compared the richness and vitality of European achievement, in culture, arts and science, with the succession of self-destructive conflicts which has beset our continent. Instead of being a force for civilisation and tolerance in the world, Europe and its rivalries have been too often the cause of war, and war on a world scale. Churchill drew a deceptively simple lesson. He sought ‘to recreate the European family… and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom’. As I look around me in this ever more important Parliament of Europe, I believe that Members of Parliament, and all Europeans, can be proud of what has been achieved.
Having expressed thanks for her invitation and warm welcome to Strasbourg – a city symbolising reconciliation – she explained that she would be considering the challenges facing a now growing and ever more diverse European family. Such challenges, she said, were foreseen from the outset:
The European family contains diverse personalities. In this, and in its need for tolerance and mutual support, it is like any family. The founders of the European Community wanted to draw strength from that diversity. They sought to manage and channel differences, to bind nations and peoples together in a common endeavour, as free partners.
“They fully recognised the scale of the task,” she said, “but their aims were much more ambitious than just a materialistic vision”, as described in the memoirs of Jean Monnet – one of the founders of the European Community – from which the Queen quoted (in French). The basis for the first community – joint agreements on coal and steel – was symbolic: not only are these industries at the heart of a nation’s prosperity, but also of its arms production. By binding countries in “solid ties of mutual self-interest”, these industries would on the contrary become a guarantee of peace.
“A European war,” she said, “was to be made not just unlikely but unthinkable”.
A diversity of nations within a growing democratic Community
The Queen declared that the countries of Europe were part of a unique effort: recognising and preserving the diversity of nations, while at the same time developing the capacity to act on a European basis.
Fundamental to this, she said, was the community’s commitment to “reconciliation and democracy” and the openness of its parliament to genuine debate.
“I welcome your contribution to European democracy,” she said, to the applause of the audience. That was a poignant moment because the European Parliament’s own powers were being strengthened to give it democratic legislative power alongside the hitherto secretive Council of Ministers.
But the point she went on to make was that neither the spirit of the founders nor reconciliation across Europe would be best served by regarding the existing Community as “a comfortable club with closed doors”. Rather, “The Community has always welcomed European nations which shared its fundamental aims”. And, as she said:
Further new members are knocking at the door. We should be confident of opening it to them for with each enlargement the Community has become stronger. Stronger or not, though, we cannot afford to be complacent. War has not been banished from the European continent. I think particularly of the war-torn republics of what used to be Yugoslavia. The healing process, symbolised by Strasbourg, remains badly needed elsewhere.
The Community had a key role to play, she said:
With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the ‘Iron Curtain’ has fallen. Our task now is to tend and nurture the green shoots of a democratic spring. The Community is especially well suited to this task. Its institutions were built for reconciliation and to reflect common interest. This is an enterprise which cannot depend upon Europe’s efforts alone; it will need the whole free world. But the Community’s experience stands as an example of what can be achieved.
Extending the Community: a worthy ambition
In summarising her encouragement of the Community to welcome new members, the Queen drew on the history of the Community so far, which showed:
That reconciliation can take the place of conflict. That diversity can be safeguarded within a democratic framework. That cooperation can deepen understanding and build a real Community of interest.
The message from this, then, was surely that:
We must ensure that the friendship and mutual respect, which we have built among ourselves, should extend more widely throughout our continent, and enrich our relations with the wider world.
It is a worthy ambition, true to the conviction and example of the founding fathers of the Community. Others on our continent, long-established or newly emerged democracies, increasingly look towards the European Community. We must not let them down.
To “loud and sustained applause”, she ended her speech as follows:
I began with a quotation from a speech by Winston Churchill. I shall close by quoting one of Sir Winston’s most distinguished predecessors — Lord Salisbury. In 1888, in a speech in Wales, he said: ‘We are a part of the Community of Europe, and we must do our duty as such.’ One hundred and four years on, I salute the wisdom of those words. May God grant the same wisdom to us as we build, together, our European family.
