Matas Europe Day speech

THE leader of the Balearic Government, Jaume Matas, yesterday in his Europe Day speech, expressed his rejection of “exclusive and divisive ethnocentrism”, which in the past has provoked “undesirable conflict”. He was speaking on the patio of the Consolat de Mar, in the company of the Parliamentary Speaker, Pere Rotger; the Mayor of Palma, Catalina Cirer; and the Commandant General of the Balearics, Emilio Roldan Pascual, amongst others. “All initiatives against international cooperation and all exclusive and divisive ethnocentrism are against the founding principles of a union which grew out of the second World War as the only alternative to another conflict with dramatic consequences for the Continent”, said Matas. He added that in 1950 the then French Foreign Minister, Robert Schumann, proposed for Europe “a community of common interests and solidarity as a means of ensuring that any conflict between European peoples would be made not just unthinkable, but impossible”.