Italian President Sergio Mattarella said Wednesday that the European Union needed to show more unity to combat the threat of terrorism. "Only with more unity among states will we be able to defeat terrorism," he said in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. "No country can face it on its own... Apparently simple responses do not help, in part because they lead us to renounce fundamental rights".
Mattarella added that, after Turkey's downing of a Russian jet Tuesday, the EU must seek "shared choices that effectively combat the forces of disorder and terror" in its foreign and security policy. "Yesterday's tragic events confirm the urgency of this".
He said that Europe was wounded by terrorist attacks. "I speak at a particularly dramatic moment for all of us," he said. "Europe is wounded. Brussels, Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Paris are all painful, indelible lacerations on the body of our union". Mattarella was accompanied to the parliament by Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and Sandro Gozi, the undersecretary with the brief for European affairs. In his address, he recalled this month's Paris attacks and Valeria Solesin, an Italian doctoral student who was among the 130 victims. "Our everyday life was hit in Paris, our conception of being together, our habits," he said.
"That way of being, thinking and living that is a characteristic of the people of the Union".
He described Solesin as "an Italian girl, a European girl, whose young life was cut down".
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