The European Union should be simpler, with less red tape and closer to citizens, said EPP president and former Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens.
The EPP has the strength to transform the crisis into elan, into a Europe full of enthusiasm in the whole society, not just among politicians, Martens said, adding that the EPP had the strength to fill Europe with soul again.
The host of the convention, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, pointed to the values his party relied on, saying that the people's strength and faith had overpowered totalitarian regimes in Europe.
Nazism, fascism and communism lost the war they imposed on mankind because our values, the values of life, democracy and freedom, proved to be stronger then their utopias, said Berlusconi, adding that those values continued to inspire the building of the new millennium.
Austrian Chancellor and European Council President Wolfgang Schuessel said the left wing ridiculed Democratic Christian and right wing parties when they highlighted their values -- family, freedom and democracy.
But we need those values because there is no Europe without them, he said, adding that the type of reform Europe needed and the EPP could carry out was the one Angela Merkel caused in Germany.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso too underlined that freedom and pluralism were the foundation of Europe's progress and that changes and modernisation of policy were necessary for Europe to overcome its crisis.
Barroso said European citizens were horrified by the red tape in European institutions and that one of the fundamental points was to simplify them and bring them closer to citizens.
German Chancellor Merkel, whom Martens announced as a person who had managed to change the mentality in a short time, said that freedom's victory would have been achieved only through EU enlargement.
All speakers extended best wishes on the EPP's 30th anniversary, underlining the fact that it was the biggest group in the European Parliament.