Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-07-21-Speech-3-021"
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"(DE) Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be able to meet the newly-elected European Parliament today and extend my congratulations to you all, and particularly you, Madam President Fontaine, on your election.
Secondly, the Berlin decisions on Agenda 2000 have secured the European Union the power to act for the next few years. If we had failed to reach agreement there, and consider what it would have meant, if the Berlin meeting had finished with no compromise having been reached at a time when the Kosovo war was just beginning and the Commission was in a state of crisis, then Europe would have been plunged into a serious, historic crisis. Agenda 2000 contained a sheaf of reform initiatives and huge national interests of a kind unknown hitherto in the history of European integration. The fact that it proved possible to reconcile these issues in one great compromise was because major Member States, not least of which Germany, refrained from pushing to achieve the most they could for their own countries, come what may, and instead made the further development of Europe a priority.
Certainly, the Federal German Government would have liked to have seen more progress in many areas, for example in agricultural policy, where, following the WTO Round, it will be soon be essential to take further reform measures. But, all in all, the compromise is still an excellent foundation on which to lead the Union into the 21st century.
Thirdly, Agenda 2000 will also foster opportunities for the enlargement of the European Union. The success of the Berlin compromise can in fact be measured in terms of the extremely positive reactions displayed by the Applicant States. The negotiations for Accession have also made good progress over the last six months. We now undertake negotiations in more than half of all the capital cities. Moreover, when we decided in Cologne to have a new Intergovernmental Conference on institutional affairs, we seized the opportunity that will enable us to soon overcome the second large internal hurdle facing the enlargement process. As a result, the historic project of enlargement has made considerable progress in terms of pace and quality.
Fourthly, at the time of the dispute that led to the resignation of the Commission, the European Parliament fulfilled the responsible role expected of it by the people of Europe. I regard this as the beginning of a process that will lead to more a pronounced democratisation of the Union. The nomination of Romano Prodi as the new President of the Commission was a very rapid reaction on the part of the EU States to the resignation of the Commission. I should like, at this juncture, to wish Romano Prodi and the new Commission a great deal of luck and every success as they embark on the great tasks ahead of them.
In adopting the Code of Conduct the new Commission has already sent out an important signal intended to regain the citizens" trust, a good start. However, I should also like today to again address particular thanks to the old Commission and all its staff for their work. Despite any criticism levied at certain individuals, we should not forget one thing, and that is that without the Commission"s hard work and commitment, we would not have been able to solve the numerous and difficult problems, and not least those encountered during the German Presidency.
(Applause)
My fifth point is that the Employment Pact agreed in Cologne makes it possible, at the European level, to pursue our goal of supplementing and strengthening national efforts to create more employment. The Pact improves the conditions necessary to achieve an active employment policy in both a national and European context. The macro-economic dialogue agreed on in Cologne, with the involvement of the two sides of industry and the European Central Bank, will make an important contribution to this process. We should therefore take stock of the situation for the first time at the Employment Summit to be held during the Portuguese Presidency.
Ladies and gentlemen, in the period that lies before us we should use the dynamic that has emerged over the last six months from the tension between the exigencies of crisis and those of reform, to take further steps towards integration. We must make progress in five key areas. The first of these is that our experience of the Kosovo conflict must lead to a speeding-up of the enlargement process. The agenda for the European Council in Helsinki includes decisions that will point the way. Two questions of central importance will be discussed, the first being which additional Applicant States the EU is to enter into negotiations with. It has been evident for a long time now that several of the States not yet at the negotiating stage have made considerable progress in terms of reform and this should be shown due appreciation in Helsinki. It should also be made clear that any candidate fulfilling the Copenhagen Criteria is entitled to enter into accession negotiations.
The second question which will need to be addressed is that of a target date for concluding negotiations with the first candidates. Numerous idealistic proposals have been made, but as yet we have no foundation worthy of consideration on which to base a realistic date. However, a foundation of this kind will be created for the first time in Helsinki, when the full results of the screening and the Commission"s new progress reports are made known. It is therefore my fervent hope that it will be possible to fix a date in December. Personally, I feel that we must fix the date in December. This would send out a signal of enormous importance in terms of the future dynamics of the reform process as well as those of the accession negotiations.
Unfortunately, it has not been possible, over the last six months, to bring about any substantial improvement in Turkey"s status vis-a-vis the European Union. Germany"s proposal to designate Turkey an Applicant State and to assess it in accordance with the same Copenhagen Criteria as applied to the other candidates, did not meet with agreement in Cologne, but this issue remains on the agenda. It is important that Turkey should draw up a timetable for implementing the Copenhagen Criteria. It is essential that Turkey fulfil these criteria if it is to enter into accession negotiations.
At the beginning of the German Presidency, the European Union took a historic step when it introduced the single currency, i.e. the euro. In January, I declared here in the European Parliament that the Federal Government considered the rationale behind the introduction of the euro to represent further steps towards achieving full integration, and that Germany would spare no effort in attempting to bring this about. I said that we considered it important to make the structural and procedural preparations needed to transform a union of Western European countries into a truly pan-European Union which would, at the same time, have power to act in matters of foreign policy and security, and which must therefore be more democratic too.
My second point is that if an enlarged Union is to retain its ability to negotiate then it is essential that the three institutional questions that remained open in Amsterdam, namely the size and composition of the Commission, vote weighting in the Council, and extending majority voting, are clarified in good time and comprehensively before enlargement takes place. In any case, this is in the interests of the Applicant States. We should therefore make every available effort to adhere to the timetable for institutional reform agreed on in Cologne and to complete the package of reforms in the year 2000 under the French Presidency. However this will require the will and support of all Member States.
Thirdly, the end of the fourth, and hopefully last, Yugoslavian war of succession in Kosovo and the agreement of the Stability Pact mean that for the first time in its history, South-Eastern Europe now has a real opportunity to break with nationalism and violence forever and draw closer to an integrated Europe. Reconciliation was able to take place in Western Europe after 1945 and so it can in the Balkans today, provided that it is possible to root out the hatred and violence of nationalism there too. For this to be achieved, it is important that the European Union should make the securing of peace in South-Eastern Europe a priority in peacetime too. Reconstruction in Kosovo and the EU"s central role in giving impetus to the Stability Pact mean that it carries more responsibility, also in material terms. Equally though, in the long-term this represents a major and exceptional opportunity for the Union and its national economies which we should embrace with determination.
Economic co-operation will be a decisive factor in the stabilisation of South-Eastern Europe. Germany supports additional proposals for creating a regional Trade and Customs Union with the aim of forming a free-trade zone which ought, if possible, to be linked with the European Union. A stable economic framework of this kind would also be of great benefit to outside investment. However, the most important goal is to create stable conditions for democracy and rule of law throughout the Balkans. The key to the lasting stabilisation of the region will be the democratisation of Serbia.
(Applause)
This is a question which the Serbian people must decide for themselves. Nevertheless, as far as the European Union and its Member States are concerned, we must do everything to strengthen democracy in Serbia and weaken Milosevic. It is precisely at this time, when courageous demonstrations are taking place throughout the country, that we must show the Serbian people that they can count on the full support of the European Union when it comes to the democratisation of their country.
(Applause)
Our experiences over the past few months show that Europe also needs to be better organised in terms of security and defence policy if it wishes to be able to manage future crises effectively by itself. The Cologne decisions on the creation of a European Security and Defence Union have far-reaching implications. This area of policy must be the European Union"s next large project for integration, after the Internal Market and Economic and Monetary Union. Consequently, the development of common options for action and the creation of the infrastructure necessary to achieve this will, in time, be the very first item on Europe"s agenda for the future. But in fact, this is not about militarisation of the European Union at all, but about developing it into an effective force for peace which has the ability to act, and which is able, as in Kosovo, to uphold the power of justice and the renunciation of violence, thus ensuring that war as a political instrument in Europe is forever a thing of the past.
(Applause)
The future viability of the European Union depends on its being strengthened in terms of its legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the citizens. The draft for a European Charter of Fundamental Rights agreed in Cologne should ensure that the fundamental rights of the citizens are accorded the same status at the European level as they are at the national level. This is a new process. The Charter should be based on a wide-ranging dialogue involving representatives of the European Parliament, the national parliaments, the government and the Commission. This Committee should present its report to the European Council under the French Presidency. I hope that the European Parliament will play a leading role in this process, building on the preparatory work that has already been underway in the Parliament for some time.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the progress that has been made in terms of political integration and enlargement raises an issue of central importance to the future of the European Union. How can a Union of 27, or with South-Eastern Europe in mind, in the long-term even 30 Member States, continue to work and have the power to act? How is the enlarged Europe of the future both to retain its cohesion and fulfil its obligations internally and externally? This question, which in terms of far-reaching implications goes well beyond the next Intergovernmental Conference, is very soon to have a considerable impact on the debate on reform within Europe, indeed it must impact on it. Democratisation and, ultimately, development of the parliamentary process within the European Union, must be central to this debate: the creation of a true union of citizens. It is only by following this path that we will gradually be able to overcome the decline in interest which manifested itself in the alarmingly low turnout at the European elections. Indeed, it was to the alarm of us all.
Today, six months on, we can see that the progress made in these three main areas relating to integration has fulfilled our expectations. This progress is closely associated with the two crises that the European Union has had to contend with over the last six months. The resignation of the Commission, the outbreak of war in Kosovo and the European Council in Berlin all coincided, putting the EU"s power to act to the test in a dramatic way at a particularly critical moment in time. The EU Member States maintained not only unity and their power to act during this extremely difficult period, but also displayed considerable creative genius. They turned the crisis to good account as an incentive to achieve further integration. The reason for this is that the war in Kosovo served to highlight again that the essence of European integration is to establish a lasting framework for peace on our continent. This insight resulted in an awareness of the degree to which the national interests of individual Member States are interconnected, and in a readiness throughout Europe to take a decisive step forward in the historic task of bringing European integration to fruition.
The democratic imperative has become evident from the conflict surrounding the resignation of the Commission, during which the fundamental issues of transparency, democratic control and the legitimacy of European dealings have been raised. However, this imperative is also a consequence of the European Union"s growing power to act, not least in terms of foreign and security policy. A Union that wants to have the power to act in crises and conflicts urgently needs its own chain of democratic legitimacy. It will therefore be essential, in the future, for the rights of the European Parliament to be extended beyond the new stipulations of the Amsterdam Treaty, but also for the national parliaments to have greater involvement.
At the beginning of the German Presidency, Madam President, I initiated a debate on the idea of a European Constitution. This debate will further strengthen the citizens" consciousness of their identity as European citizens. However, we should detach ourselves from a strictly legal understanding of the term Constitution and instead understand it to mean a combination of values and fundamental principles, the functioning mechanisms of European co-existence, and the way in which the European Union functions as a political construct
The two crises experienced over the last six months will have a long-lasting effect on the progress of European integration. The Kosovo conflict has caused us to focus again on the point of departure for integration; the setting up of a European framework for peace. The resignation of the Commission, on the other hand, has shown that we will need in the future to create a truly democratic Union with as many checks as there are balances. I feel that these two insights serve as a good basis for the Finnish Presidency, which I wish the best of luck for the responsible task that lies ahead of it. Thank you for your attention.
(Loud Applause)
In this way, the crisis has accelerated the process of integration. The step forward we have taken in the course of the last few months is above all a success shared by all Member States and European Union institutions. I should therefore like to thank the European Parliament today for fulfilling its responsibility to extraordinarily good effect during this difficult period.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I should now like to take a few moments to sum up the main events of the German Presidency and then look at the prospects for the future. Firstly, there has been an increase in the ability of the EU to act in matters of foreign and security policy. The EU is now an international player holding considerable sway. Nothing rendered this more apparent than the Belgrade mission undertaken by President Ahtisaari and the Russian envoy to Kosovo, Mr Chernomyrdin. The contribution they made towards bringing the Kosovo conflict to a peaceful conclusion has enabled the civil might of the EU to take a major step in the direction of a common foreign policy. Unlike 1991/92, the EU pursued a common line in the Balkans this time, which can be explained by the fact that the European States had at last recognised that it was not just about moral duty or the future of a region on the periphery of Europe, but about their own security, indeed our collective security.
In Europe, there is just one single, indivisible kind of security; that is, the logical conclusion we can draw from our experience of the tragedy in Kosovo. If we had stood idly by in the face of bloodthirsty, aggressive nationalism on our continent, then ultimately the fate of European integration itself, the greatest achievement in recent European history, would have been placed in jeopardy. We could not and would not allow this to happen.
(Applause)
The Kosovo conflict has propagated two important ideas in the EU. Firstly, South-Eastern Europe is now widely and unreservedly accepted as being part of Europe. This led to the Stability Pact being adopted, a subject I shall return to later. Secondly, the Member States have hardened in their resolve finally to give shape to a Common Foreign and Security policy. Against this background it has been possible to present a united front to China and the Near East in terms of human rights policy and many other difficult foreign policy issues, and ultimately to reach a number of important decisions in Cologne, which included adopting the first common strategy towards Russia and a timetable for achieving a European security and defence policy, as well as nominating Javier Solana as the best possible candidate for the post of Mr CFSP.
The European Union"s importance as an international player has also become evident at the numerous Interregional Conferences such as the Latin American Summit in Rio, the Mediterranean Conference held in Stuttgart, a platform which can now gain considerably in importance against the background of a new peace dynamic, the ASEM in Berlin and many other meetings."@en1
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