Det talade ordet gäller.
 
Jan Björklunds tal vid öppnandet av ELDR-kongressen den 30 oktober 2008
 
[ELDR är det europeiska liberala och demokratiska partiet.]
 
It was in the night between the 18th and 19th November 1944 that my Norwegian mother escaped to Sweden. "Es wird mit dem Tode bestraft", the Nazi posters read. Those are some of the very few German words that my mother remembers to this day. One of the more serious crimes, which was severely punished, was to own a radio.
 
My grandfather owned a radio. He kept it hidden in a hole in the ground. A few nights a week, my grandfather and some other farmers in the valley carried the radio up the mountain and tuned into the news broadcasts from the free Norwegian radio in London. It was their only contact with the surrounding world during the four years of occupation.
 
In November 1944, my grandfather’s radio was reported by a neighbour to the German occupation forces. My grandfather received advance warning and was able to escape with his family, by ski over the mountains in the dark arctic night. My mother, then in her early twenties, carried her three-year old younger sister in a backpack over the border, hunted by enemy troops.
 
Today, my mother is 87 years old. She was 73 when Sweden held a referendum about EU membership. Most people her age voted against EU membership. My mother voted yes. She says she has experienced a time when Europe couldn’t cooperate.
 
But most of the Swedish population has different historic experiences from the 20th century compared to the populations in most of your countries. Sweden hasn’t experienced war, occupations or dictatorship in 200 years. This has led to the perception that Sweden can manage on its own, and should remain neutral in its relationships with others. Sweden is a member of the EU, but there is a popular scepticism against membership in the Euro and in NATO.
 
I am proud to be the leader of Sweden's most Europe-friendly party, Folkpartiet liberalerna. My party was one of the founders of the Liberal International in 1947 and it has been an active member of the ELDR ever since Sweden became a member of the EU, 15 years ago. We were the first party in Sweden to take stand for a Swedish membership of the EU, and we are the party that most strongly promotes the Swedish memberships of the Euro and NATO.  This is a logical result of our liberal views. We want our country to be a member of the most important organisations in existence for the protection of the liberal societal model.

* * *
 
Let’s be honest. In reality, the EU was the liberal response to threats from European dictatorships, in the beginning Hitler and Stalin. EU expanded, because an increasing number of countries have wanted to join the liberal community in Europe. Several Mediterranean countries joined the EU after periods of dictatorship. And, of course, Eastern European efforts for membership must be understood as a way to establish a new, liberal cooperation within a liberal community, instead of the communist community that they were previously forced into.
 
The name - the European Union - makes it sound like a union of European states. Of course, this isn’t strictly true. The EU member states should be located on the European continent. But the main requirement should be the sharing of fundamental, liberal values: democracy, freedom, respect for the individual, market economy, and humanism. Fundamentally, the European Union is a union for liberalism.
 
* * *
 
The past few weeks have been marked by great turbulence in the American economy.
 
An ideological debate has been initiated.
 
The socialist believes the solution would be to abolish the market economy and introduce an economy managed by the state. The neoliberal believes that the absence of the state is the only way forward. Our liberal idea professes the superiority of the market economy for the creation of economic prosperity, but admits that the market economy should develop within societal frameworks for the sake of social security.
 
Compare the financial crisis of 2008 with the financial crisis of 1929, from a European perspective. Then, the states let the banks go under. This resulted in chaos, and many ordinary people were left destitute. That led to social discontent, which in its turn increased the contempt for the new democracies. In several European states, people turned to new leaders who were far from democratic. That, in its turn, led to the Second World War, and later on the cold war with its Berlin Wall and oppression.
 
Let’s be completely clear on what would be at stake if the economy would be allowed to fail in a liberal society. Then people would turn to other societal systems.
 
The currency cooperation in Europe, the Euro, was essentially created to prevent a repetition of the 1930s. The Euro cooperation has withstood the test. It was when the Euro-states decided on a joint programme of political measures, which were then implemented in a coordinated manner all over Europe, that the first truly large step was taken that resulted in a noticeable dampening of the most urgent crisis. It is questionable whether this had been possible without the Euro cooperation. The Euro withstood the test.
 
* * *
 
Let us never forget why we have this congress. History has told us that liberal values always can be threatened. Cooperation between different countries, with different languages and different cultures, is hard, but the alternative is worse.
 
As many others before me, I want to say welcome to my hometown, Stockholm. I have been deputy mayor of Stockholm for twelve years and you are all welcome to the City Hall tonight. And good luck with the important work during this congress.
 
Thank you for listening.