Madam President, President-in-Office, President of the Commission, colleagues, this is an important place in which to celebrate this important moment. We in this Parliament are the tribune of the peoples of the European Union and we have gathered here today to declare solemnly our outrage, our sympathy, our solidarity and our common bond in humanity and democracy with the people of the United States of America, and with the people of New York City and Washington D.C. We witnessed yesterday a profoundly shocking event. It is a new and low threshold in the tide of human affairs. We witnessed an act of war – without a declaration of war – by persons, movements or states, as yet, not fully determined, but who acted with a grim and focused determination. We must make sure that our response is common and not isolated, shared and not unilateral, aimed at our common enemy, which is terrorism, but not at wider forces such as Islam or the wider Arab world, should that be the source whence this monster may have sprung. This modern apocalypse is America’s injury, but the wounds are universally shared among the community of democratic nations. To the people of the United States of America, to its President, its Congressional and civic leaders, and its communities throughout the country, especially the peoples of New York and Washington, to the grieving families of the missing and the dead and to those who have survived the ordeal, we express our sympathy in this hour of hardship and devastation. New York is a very special place. It is a multi-cultural microcosm of the whole world. It is a special gateway between our old continent and the New World. It was through Ellis Island that in earlier generations, before the spirit of democracy took the deep root it has right across our continent, that our huddled masses, our oppressed and our starving went to find freedom, democracy and opportunity. It is no accident that when the French Republic gave the people of the United States a gift to celebrate 100 years of that great republic, that they called that statue 'Liberty': no accident either that her extended arms should carry a torch of freedom. When someone touches that symbol, they touch us all deeply, because it is part of our common, human, democratic bond and inheritance. I remember, as a schoolboy, seeing on television at home a visit by John Fitzgerald Kennedy to places I had never been in our divided continent. I remember his visit to the great symbol of that gross division, Berlin, with its wall. I remember as a boy I could understand, although I did not know about politics or international affairs, that when that man said, “I am a Berliner”, he said something deep and meaningful in terms of solidarity at that time. Today, as the Prime Minister has remarked, we are all Americans, we are all New Yorkers, we are all Washingtonians. We share the sense of shock and horror. We share the bewildered outrage, we feel the vulnerability, for this is our common inheritance from yesterday's barbarous outrage. We share common democratic values and interests and we stand together willing to fight against terrorism and promote those interests and values. It is important that we as Europeans say to the Congressional leadership today: ‘You do not stand alone. You are not isolated. We can make common cause in this matter, and we must do so.’ But, most of all, we stand today in our common bond of humanity as our American friends bravely search for their survivors and for their dead. Language often fails us on these occasions. My own colleagues have asked me to invite you, Madam President, in addition to this solemn moment, to open a book of condolence that we might also convey through that, at some appropriate time to the Congress, our interlocutor in US democracy, that in spite of the space which divides us across the Atlantic, we are resolutely united by the bonds of democracy and freedom and in the fight against terrorism. Our message to them today, in this fight for democracy and against terrorism, is that our only choice is to stand united; for united we stand but divided we shall fall. (Loud applause)

Political group: ELDR