To mark the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome,&nbsp;Antonio TAJANI, EP President opens the&nbsp;&ldquo;Citizens&rsquo; Parliament&rdquo;, bringing together people from all over the EU to discuss the future of the EU in the plenary chamber, in the EP in Brussels. Ambiance shots

Brussels

TAJANI, Antonio (EPP, IT)

debate

speech

60th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome (T)

Citizens’ Parliament - 60 years Treaty of Rome: extracts from the welcome speech by Antonio TAJANI, EP President and ambiance shots of the event

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Antonio TAJANI, EP President, It&rsquo;s really your turn now to speak in this room, it&rsquo;s a symbolic gesture but one that I think is very important and one that personally is important to me, because unfortunately we are going through a difficult period. Terrorism continues to be a huge problem, we saw what happened in Orly only a couple of days ago, illegal immigration, the economic crisis, a lot of young people aren&rsquo;t able to find work, so it&rsquo;s a difficult period and this gives rise to disillusionment with the institutions of Europe and with Europe in general.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Antonio TAJANI, EP President, We want to shrink the distance between European institutions and European citizens, we want you, you who represent half a billion European citizens to feel that you are real leading figures, stakeholders in the choices which we have to make.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Antonio TAJANI, EP President, That&rsquo;s why we invited you here today. Not just to organise this event but to try to make everyone understand that we want to change, that Europe wants to change, it wants to become better but nevertheless that without this Europe we are all going nowhere. Change for the better. Because destroying things just because things are going bad or going well simply is vandalism. We need to work together now to short out the problems our citizens are facing.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Antonio TAJANI, EP President, And you will be debating today just as we debate and you will see that it&rsquo;s not always easy to find the right solutions, to find the right balance. But you&rsquo;ll try today, sitting in the seats of MEP&rsquo;s to put your ideas across and you&rsquo;ll see what is like, nobody will stop anyone from speaking.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Antonio TAJANI, EP President, And as more celebrations in Rome take place I do hope that it will be a chance for Europe really to restart. And when you go back home to your cities in the member states of the European Union, I hope that you&rsquo;ll tell people about this day. I hope you&rsquo;ll tell people what you&rsquo;ve experienced and you can say that in a great democratic Europe people are free to do what they want, and say what they want. And that there are 751 MEPs who regard you as being crucially important figures whose job is to work on your behalf.