Speech
Speech of His Majesty the King in the Gala Dinner offered by Their Royal Highnesses the Grand Dukes of Luxembourg
Royal Highnesses,
I want to thank to you for the warm welcome that you have wanted to excuse to us and the words full of affection, towards Spain and towards us, that you end of dedicate.
Of this dear Luxembourg the Queen and I keep many indelible memories, like our first Trip of State, in 1980, when we could enjoy the extraordinary hospitality of the Grand Duke Jean and the longed Grand Duchess Josefina-Carlota.
Also we remember with enormous satisfaction Your visit to Spain in the year 2001, the first Trip of State of Your reign.
It was that significant sample of personal affection and of the excellent relations of friendship between our two peoples countries.
A relations, which have their root in a common space, a history and a legacy, and that today receive a new dimension, on having could have united the energies of both States in the frame of the European Union.
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has been for the Spaniards a modal and a very valued support in our process of incorporation to the European institutions.
It has turned also into a clear exponent of the best achievements of the process of European construction, to which Your country has known to contribute his exemplary enthusiasm, creative spirit and particular aptitude to stimulate the consensus.
Luxembourg has managed to be a model of well politician and diplomat do in the European area, a relevant associate for Spain, with whom we coincide with many expositions with institutional matter and on political common of the European Union.
An example of our identity of positions and our cooperation, it has been the joint initiative of the Governments of Luxembourg and of Spain in defense of the substance and of the balances that gathers the Constitutional Agreement, and in support of a solution of consensus and of willingness of integration.
With independence of the final solution that could be reached, we must to bet firmly for the continuity and improvement of the European project, which was born of the hand of celebrated political, as Robert Schuman, linked so intimately to this land.
Today, any more that never, we must to affirm that the best future for the Europeans is in an integrated Europe, capable of confronting the challenges which solution has to be necessarily European.
Equally significant it is our narrow collaboration in the construction of Free's Space, Security and Justice, around the nucleus of resolved in Schengen's city more than twenty years ago.
Likewise, we attribute special importance to the social dimension of the Union, without which there would not be complete the Political Europe to which we aspire.
Besides our cooperation as for international safety, in the frame of the Atlantic Alliance, we share a similar valuation on the essential role that the multilateral diplomacy must recover in the current world.
A role that result to be fundamental, as much to confront those threats that have a global character and that, as the terrorism, they concern the daily life of our citizens, as to attack the inexcusable tasks of the struggle against the poverty or the prevention of the climatic change.
Luxembourg and Spain contribute, so , a lot of their better efforts to the system of United Nations.
In this frame, highlight the generous politic from Luxembourg of official help to the development.
The International Cooperation to the Development is also one of the essential dimensions of the foreign politics of Spain. Attending to the spirit of solidarity that encourages the Spanish, we aspire to place for 2008 our Official Help to the Development in 0,5 % of our National Brute Product.
Royal Highness,
In the bilateral plane, it is a motive of particular pride, to remember that so many Spaniards have contributed with their effort and talent to the prosperity of Your country, integrated in the society who generously received them, when they had to leave their country.
Today it makes me happy to prove the important growth that register our economic relations ,as much in industrial matter, as financial or managerial.
Sample of it is the Economic - Financial Seminar, that we will have the satisfaction of being able to inaugurate in the frame of this Visit of State.
Also our interchanges grow in the cultural plane, since it is demonstrated by the extraordinary exhibition organized by the National Museum of History and of Art under the titlel " Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld, Prince of the Renaissance ", with lendings of the National Patrimony of Spain and of the Prado Museum, which count on our High Patronazgo.
Royal Highness,
This Visit of State offers us the opportunity to sit the bases of a cooperation furthermore, to take advantage of the potential that encloses our understanding, in the bilateral plane and before the global challenges that appear to our societies.
With this spirit, I raise my glass to toast for the personal luck of Your Royal Highnesses, for the happiness and well-being of Luxembourg People and for the narrow friendship that joins Luxembourg and Spain in the bosom of the Grand European family.
Thank you very much.
Source/ CasaReal.
http://www.casareal.es/noticias/news/20070416_palabras_rey_cena_gala_luxemburgo-ides-idweb.html