Van Rompuy asserts claiming independent national survival is possible is a lie.

The power-crazed EU Council President has really shot himself in the foot this time. The Belgian was speaking at a grandly titled first annual "Europe Address" in Berlin on Tuesday, the skimped Deutshe Welle report may be read from here. The remarks DW excluded were nevertheless picked up by EU Observer and the Irish Times. These reports contained the following complete and utter garbage, Irish Times version first:

In a speech last night in Berlin in which he argued against protectionist tendencies, he made the case that there were people in every member state who believed their own countries could survive alone in the globalised world.

“It is more than an illusion: it is a lie,” he said as he cited Franklin Roosevelt’s expression that the only thing to fear was fear itself.

“The biggest enemy of Europe today is fear. Fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism and nationalism leads to war.”

He said today’s nationalism was not a positive feeling of pride in one’s identity but a negative feeling of apprehension to others.

“Fear of enemies within our borders and beyond our borders, it is a feeling all over Europe, not of a majority, but everywhere present.” The EU was born out of a will to co-operate, reconcile and to act in solidarity, he said.

“Fear is the source of immobility, of a lack of ambition, or worse, of protectionism, in Europe and globally. Those who are afraid of the loss of jobs and prosperity will thus create precisely what they wanted to avoid.” Mr Van Rompuy also made the case against renewed institutional debate in the EU as its leaders discuss “limited” treaty change to create permanent rescue measures for euro zone countries.

The EU Observer report quotes it somewhat differently as follows: "We have together to fight the danger of a new euro-scepticism," he said in a speech in Berlin on Tuesday night (9 November).

"This is no longer the monopoly of a few countries. In every member state, there are people who believe their country can survive alone in the globalised world," he continued.

"It is more than an illusion: it is a lie!"

The president was speaking in the German capital on the Schicksalstag, or 'fateful day,' the anniversary of five pivotal events in the nation's history: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fall of the monarchy in 1918, but also the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Kristallnacht in 1938 and the execution of a leader of the 1848 revolutions in the German states.

Quoting wartime US president Franklin Roosevelt, he said that the "biggest enemy of Europe today is fear," and that this ultimately could lead to war.

"Fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism, and nationalism leads to war," he said. "Today's nationalism is often not a positive feeling of pride of one's own identity, but a negative feeling of apprehension of the others. Fear of 'enemies' within our borders and beyond our borders."

"It is a feeling all over Europe, not of a majority, but everywhere present."

That survival as an independent sovereign state is a "lie" will surely come as a surprise to the multitude of such states who together form the United Nations! Van Rompuy is however right to talk of fear mounting within every former country of the EU, it is the fear of the post-Lisbon EU, that non-democratic monster which we have created in our midst, bankrupting its member states, corruptly continuing unaudited for the 16th consecutive year and headed by an 'appointed man' who cuts a figure of complete ridicule as he endeavours to gain a disinterested world's attention.