Top 153 Brussels Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

The laws imposed by Brussels damage Italian artisans, traders, pensioners, but hey, Europe is asking, so we have to obey. Come on, if Europe asks me to throw myself in a well, I'm not going to do that just because Europe is asking me to, am I?

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies - and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

Some of the environmental lobbyists of the western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they would be crying out for tractors, and fertilizer, and irrigation canals, and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.

When I finished my degree I became a physics and maths teacher. And worked in the international school in Brussels, because like many kids, after University I went home going 'ahhh I don't know what to do'. I happened to fall upon a job there because they were desperate for a physics teacher which is a common theme among many schools.

Whenever the debate moves on to hard numbers - our deficit with Europe, our surplus with the rest of the world, our Brussels budget contributions, the tiny part of our economy dependent on sales to the EU, the vast part subjected to EU regulation - Euro-enthusiasts quickly shift their ground and start harrumphing about influence.

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

If you want to get really crazy, Brussels sprouts love cured pork. Crisp up some bacon, pancetta, or chorizo in a skillet; save the crisp bits; use the fat to roast the sprouts; then toss them together with the meat when they come out of the oven.

I was very fortunate to grow up with parents who love to travel, so I traveled from a young age. My dad's a heart surgeon and goes to conferences all over the world. By the time I was seven, I traveled outside the country for the first time. We went to Paris. The next year, we went to London, and then Brussels.

I find it extraordinary that I'm being told I can't trust you the voter to get a government in to protect workers rights and that we need Brussels to defend you, the euro is a broken project we are going to pay, no you are going to pay out of your taxes one bailout out of another and the European union does not protect your jobs.

I think that the real tragedy of Greece - aside of the savagery of European bureaucracy, Brussels bureaucracy and northern banks, which was really savage - is that the Greek crisis didn't have to erupt. It could have been taken care of pretty easily at the very beginning. But it happened and Syriza came into office with a declared commitment to combat it, and in fact as I recall they actually called a referendum, which horrified Europe.

Here in Europe some of the challenges have to do with structures that are so complicated. You've got Brussels, and you've got parliament, you've got councils and then you've got national governments. So people sometimes don't feel as if they know who's making decisions, and the more that we can bring people in and engage them, the better. Some of it is also cultural and social, people's sense of identity.

Since it took up office, the Commission which I lead has pursued a clear policy: we need less interference from Brussels when it comes to the things that Member States can deal with better on their own. That is why we no longer regulate oil cans or showerheads, but concentrate instead on what we can do better together rather than alone - such as tackling the refugee crisis or securing our external borders. Only in that way can we make people feel that Europe makes a tangible difference.

Hydrogen peroxide-based bombs were used in the London bombings in 2005; in al Qaeda's foiled plot to attack subways in New York City in 2009 and also in the ISIS-directed Paris attacks in 2015 and the ISIS-directed attacks in Brussels a year later.

This is crossing the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign states in Europe with fully-fledged governments and parliaments which represent legitimate interests of their citizens, but only one State will remain. Basic things will be decided by a remote 'federal government' in Brussels and, for example, Czech citizens will be only a tiny particle whose voice and influence will be almost zero. ... We are against a European superstate.

It’s a Belgian beer, sweetie. Please tell me you’ve at least heard of it. (Blaine) Boy, I was born in Brussels and the last time I checked, this was my new homeland, America, not my birthplace. So you can either order an American-made beer or I’ll bring you water and you can sit there and act all superior until you puke, okay? (Aimee)

For the institutions of the European Union are at present incomplete. A European Senate is badly needed to complete them. By creating an upper chamber in the European parliament, a new bridge could be built between national political classes, which retain democratic legitimacy, and the decision-making process in Brussels. Such a Senate should be recruited by indirect election from exisiting national parliaments.

In some of the great cities of Europe - Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Brussels - tourists bored with life above ground can descend below. All these cities have sewer museums and tours, and all expose their underbelly willingly to the curious. But not London, arguably the home of the most splendid sewer network in Europe.

As a citizen of Ireland I have more sovereignty over our government. Because citizens now have more ways of holding the Irish government to account, not just under Irish constitutional law, but under the European system, at Strasbourg and Brussels. This, I believe, is the benefit for individual citizens.

At the time, Jean-Claude [Juncker] was already an important man in Brussels. I was a young representative in the European Parliament. We talked for a long time and from that point on, our connection became increasingly deep. But our working-class origins are at least as important to our bond.

In Europe one needs to act ‘as if’ – as if what was wanted was little, in order to obtain much, as if States were to remain sovereign to convince them to concede sovereignty … The Commission in Brussels, for example, should act as if it were a technical instrument, in order to be able to be treated as a government. And so on by disguise and subterfuge.

Countries are different. They make different choices. We cannot harmonise everything. For example, it is neither right nor necessary to claim that the integrity of the single market, or full membership of the European Union requires the working hours of British hospital doctors to be set in Brussels irrespective of the views of British parliamentarians and practitioners.

Around 10:30 or 11, I'll make poached eggs and maybe some Brussels sprouts - kind of random, but delicious. Sometimes I'll do bacon. I've been on a more fat/protein diet with fewer carbs and less saturated stuff, which has actually been feeling really good.

You go to Paris, or you go to Portugal, you go to Poland, and you ask, 'Who are you people?' They'll tell you, we're Portuguese, we're Spanish, we're Polish. Who are the people that are really European? The people in Brussels, in the E.U. bureaucracy. Europe has not been able to move to the level of patriotic identification with the concept.

When you say that terrorism, particularly ISIS, radicals or terrorists being contained, that are the jayvee team, we don't have to worry about them anymore and then people are being killed in Nice, in Berlin, certainly in Orlando at the nightclub, in San Bernardino, in Paris, in Brussels, it doesn't ring true to anybody that they're not advancing. It doesn't ring true to anybody.

The anti-war politicians who have risen to power in Washington, London, Ottawa and Brussels have never had to explain why they were offering the persecuted people of Iraq nothing that was in any way more useful to them than the shoddy, outrageously ill-planned intervention that was on offer from Blair and Bush back in 2003.

We want to make our own Netherlands, to close our borders and to keep all that money that we give to the foreigners, there is billions, to Africa for development, to Brussels, to Greece, to asylum seekers in the Netherlands, we will stop that and give all that money to the Dutch people living in the Netherlands.

After a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.

How can you compare my life to any other MEP? I mean, come on, it's crackers, isn't it? Look, other MEPs do five days a week in Brussels and pop home for weekends. I'm working seven bloody days a week, all the hours God sends. If you include the socialising, it's over 100 hours a week.

When I listen to an American singer, I wanna listen to his music in his language, because he's more spontaneous - he's more natural - and I need his point of view. And our point of view here in Brussels is French and Flemish.

Well, I think here there is some money gathered, especially in Europe, through the web, through connection to a network. I mean, imagine that in Brussels there is only one person, one single person, which is monitoring the traffic that goes on on the internet for the jihadist groups. In Strasbourg there are two people. So I mean you can imagine how easy it is to raise money through the net.

As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the "capital of the free world." But it seems to me that Brussels, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.

Here in Brussels, we did everything to accommodate David Cameron's concerns. My collaborators and I personally spent countless days and nights negotiating an agreement that was fair toward the United Kingdom and toward the other 27 Member States. I was then very surprised to see that this settlement played no role whatsoever in the campaign in the United Kingdom. At the same time it is hardly surprising.

Lots of the free world has become weak. When you look at Brussels, when you look at the way they've handled things from law enforcement standpoints, when you look at Paris, when you look at so many other places, no, it's not. But neither is the United States a safe place, because we're allowing thousands of people to come in here. Nobody knows where they're from. Nobody knows who they are and they're coming in here by the thousands. And let me tell you something, we're going to have problems just as big or bigger than they've got.