President Barroso on the current situation in Ukraine

"(...) Those young people in the streets of Ukraine, with freezing temperatures, are writing the new narrative for Europe(...).

My appeal to all the intellectuals, to all men and women of culture, to all citizens, is not to give up to this defeatism, is to have the courage to fight the negative forces because yes, the populist forces, the extremist forces are negative forces that are today under a theme that is very often an anti-European theme, making the revival of the all demons of Europe, like extreme nationalism, like xenophobia, sometimes racism -- these are negative values.

It is important, in face of these challenges - instead of keeping ourselves in the comfort zone, namely the so called establishment parties - to have the courage to go out and fight, not to give up to those arguments, to explain with reasonable and rational arguments - sometimes for some of us with emotion - why we care about Europe, why Europe is something we must cherish precisely to defend these values.

And if sometimes in Europe some of us have doubts about how important these values are, just look at Ukraine. "
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-1116_en.htm