WARSAW
Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek on Friday said Europe needed to secure social and cultural integration to ward off what he called "tendencies contradicting European values."
"There is no place in today's Europe for racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and discrimination. It is a task for all of us to prevent further dissemination of such thoughts," Cicek told a Warsaw conference of the European Union parliament heads.
Cicek said the EU needed to secure social and cultural integration besides political and economic ones, warning that EU leaders should not allow the recession to force Europe to "turn in on itself."
Cicek said Turkey's EU membership would help Europe overcome the recession as well as bring the Union's political, economic and social strength to a vast geography.
"The economic and financial recession you are in should trigger rather than hamper the Union's enlargement drive. In fact the crisis is not just economic. EU is no more discussing the stability of the Euro but also its own future," Cicek said.
