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President Ilves at the opening session of the first Lennart Meri commemorative conference “Remember the Future”, 29 March 2007

29.03.2007

Madame President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ministers, Friends,

I didn’t speak about Lennart Meri before in the session we had because I wanted to give a little more time to it. I think its fair to say that probably none of us would be here today, were it not for Lennart Meri. Not merely, because so many of us were his friends, but because without Lennart, we even physically simply would not be gathering in an EU and NATO country, Estonia, to discuss how to proceed with European foreign and security policy, trans-Atlantic relations, and all of the issues on the agenda for these three days including how do we help Ukraine and Georgia, what do we do in the Middle East. These issues simply would not even be discussed and there wouldn’t be a reason for you to be here, if we hadn’t had Lennart Meri. In fact, I doubt that even the hotel, the SAS Radisson, where the conference is taking place would have been built if there had not been a Lennart Meri.

It isn’t so much that Lennart Meri himself accomplished all of that and certainly he didn’t build the SAS Radisson. But thanks to him so much was set in motion that allows us today to discuss not our own concerns about someday joining the EU and NATO, but rather what we can all do together. It was thanks to Lennart Meri that so many people who otherwise would have continued with their normal lives gave up those lives, did something else and came to work, came to help Estonia, beginning with Sir Gary Johnson, Ufe Ellemann-Jensen, and the tens and tens of then young Estonians, today somewhat heavier, middle-aged Estonians, Tiit Pruuli, Jüri Luik, well, I can’t start naming them all, because there are so many, but who out of a belief in what Lennart Meri said and did and the dreams that he proposed and that he saw for Estonia, gave up what they were doing to come and work for Estonia, and they were the people who made Estonia what it is today. And I think that this is one reason why we all must be grateful.

But then there’s Lennart himself. I know from my own experience how this corner of Europe was viewed before Lennart. It was an unnecessary messy area, whose independence was not in the interests of anyone, besides ourselves. And not a few people said so publicly and a lot more believed it privately, or in the councils of Europe and in NATO. It was easy then and comfortable to dismiss the new post-Communist states by saying, “These people aren’t like us”. It was an era when there were two kinds of people from Eastern Europe and the post-Communist world. The smarmy types with the KGB English, the kind you still meet at certain conferences in Munich, and then there were the East Europeans with their hair on fire, proclaiming the West owed them for stopping the barbarians from the East.

But then came Lennart Meri. Lennart disarmed everyone. Erudite, witty and well read, he was in fact, every one of our ideal of the gentleman-scholar-diplomat-intellectual, that we idealized and knew from reading books or seeing movies of pre-WWII, but there weren’t anymore of those around any more. Because, in fact, there really weren’t any more of those around any more. Diplomacy had become a business just like everything else and there was no room for someone who thought, who knew philosophy, who had read literature. It was Lennart Meri who convinced countless doubters, and made uncomfortable an even larger number of naysayers, that this country, indeed so much of this part of the world, had, in fact, a justified claim to its place in the Europe of democracy, rule of law and liberty. That belonging to that Europe is a matter of choice and that after the collapse of that most horrible entity – and believe me, the greatest day of my life was December 25, 1991 – that that horrible entity, the Soviet Union, that after it collapsed, any new dividing lines –
and make no mistake, those dividing lines still exist –those dividing lines are built only by those who claim a European heritage but in practice perpetuate and deepen undemocratic, un-European despotism.

But that’s a different story. I don’t want to talk about them or that.

Today on Lennart Meri’s birthday, we open this conference of people gathered to discuss those matters always closest to Lennart Meri – foreign policy, the future of Europe, and how to expand and consolidate the zone of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. I can think of no better way to honor Lennart Meri, to honor this great European’s memory than to have leading thinkers on foreign policy, on security, on Europe gather in Tallinn on his birthday. And with that I ask all of you to stand and let us drink a toast to the memory of that truly outstanding European – Lennart Meri.