Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-09-14-Speech-2-036"
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"en.19990914.1.2-036"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, we want a democratic Europe, a peaceful Europe, a Europe of different nations. We are a Europe in the making. We want to be a strong Parliament and that is why we also want a strong Commission. The hearings have shown that some of your Commissioners are strong and others are weaker. Parliament does not have as much confidence in their readiness to reform things and does not have as much faith in the way in which they will treat Parliament. But all in all, our wish for you is that you will be the strong Commission we need, although it is possible that not all members of our group will vote for you. You were right to regard the word “responsibility” as a key word, not just in the Wise Men’s first report, but also in terms of solving future problems – collective responsibility, but also the individual responsibility held by the members of your Commission, and to my mind, the responsibility held by your officials. I am thinking of the fate of Mr Van Buitenen here, and of the fact that his case should be brought to a conclusion in an honourable manner.
Commissioner, our institutions are not equal to the challenges you have outlined as regards the enlargement of Europe for we must bring about the enlargement of Europe and make it more democratic at the same time, which is difficult. You spoke of reorganising subsidiarity and that is a statement that finds favour with us as it holds promise for the future. The parliaments of the Member States, as well as our own, must become involved. But we want to go further. We want you to consider that if the right of nations to self-determination is to be taken seriously, then that will also mean the constitutional parliaments of federal states, regions and of cultural communities being taken seriously and being given a place in the subsidiarity-based Europe of the future, for the right of nations to self-determination is a sacred principle for all the nations of the world and that does not always mean for the states alone, for those concepts do not always coincide.
I also want to remind you that we inhabit a world that has become very small. I found your speech to be rather heavily eurocentric. For when we look down our own streets we find that the poor of Africa are there as well. To a large extent, the world is one of poverty and AIDS, and one in which the Europe that you outlined as being an island of prosperity and peace is, as we know from experience, one which remains a distant dream for many people. Indeed, we have not yet been able to realise this distant dream within our own Europe. I have in mind the peace processes that are dragging on in Northern Ireland and the Basque country.
Commissioner, you can inspire confidence but at the end of the day, you have to earn it too. I hope that this Commission will achieve this."@en1
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