Watch video of Spanish MEP Esteban González Pons' Brexit speech

Guy Verhofstadt and Esteban González Pons in the European Parliament. Image: European Parliament. - Credit: Archant

A passionate pro-EU speech from a Spanish MEP condemning Brexit and warning of a ‘cold’ world outside of the EU has been shared over 21,000 times.

Esteban González Pons told MEPs that Brexit was a ‘selfish’ decision and said that the EU was less about markets and more about ‘the dreams that we share’.

The video was shared by Twitter user Polly Polak, an academic who was looking for a video to explain to students what the EU is and why Brexit was happening. She said that this video summed it up perfectly in two minutes.

In the clip, which has gone viral a year after the speech was delivered, González Pons explains: ‘Brexit is the most selfish decision taken in the years since Winston Churchill saved Europe with the blood sweat and tears of the English.

‘Europe is not a market, it is the desire to live together. To leave Europe isn’t leaving a market, it’s leaving the dreams that we share.

‘We can have a common market, but if we don’t have shared dreams we have nothing. Europe is the peace that came after the disaster of the Second World War.’

Listing the EU’s achievements he says: ‘Europe is the return of freedom to Greece, Spain and Portugal. Europe is the fall of the Berlin wall. Europe is the end of communism, Europe is the welfare state, it’s democracy. Europe is fundamental rights. Could we live without these? Could we leave all of these?’

In his closing comments he says that he is hopeful Britain will change its mind.

‘I am one of those who, on the day Mrs May announces Brexit is final, will start dreaming about a future in which the Briitsh come home.’

The video has been retweeted over 21,000 times in just three days.

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