Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-27-Speech-3-057"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.19991027.2.3-057"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, my group welcomes the publication of the Dehaene, Lord Simon and von Weizsäcker report because it makes the case clearly, and makes it well, to have an IGC that is not confined to the so-called “three Amsterdam leftovers”. We must address wider issues. This IGC, though, will not be so much about broadening the field of responsibility or the competences of the European Union; it will be about structural reform, institutional reform, reform that will make the Union more open, more efficient, more democratic and more transparent. Above all, the IGC will make it capable of functioning and carrying out its responsibilities when it is composed of more than 20 Member States.
The three Amsterdam leftovers will be part of the package but they will not be alone. We are winning the argument to have a wider agenda. But even those three leftovers, as Mr Barnier underlined, are not subjects which are easy to handle. For instance, extending the field of qualified majority voting will immediately provoke assorted Eurosceptics and others to say in their Member States that their country is giving up the veto and giving up sovereignty. Indeed, it is the position of one of the largest component parties of the EPP that there should not be an extension of qualified majority voting. Yet if they pause to think for one minute they would soon realise that their own country, every country, probably loses more from the vetoes cast by other countries than they gain in using their own in many areas of European Union responsibility.
However, change must come not just for the three Amsterdam leftovers; extension of qualified majority voting, the size of the Commission and the weighting of votes in the Council. Change is necessary for the Court. How will it function if it is going to be composed of nearly 30 members? Change is necessary as regards the size of this Parliament if we are to respect the limit of 700 members laid down in the Treaties at our own request. Something needs to be done to take further the conclusions reached by our Member States that the WEU should now be integrated and its functions, or part of its functions, transferred to the European Union.
There is the question of codification and simplification of the Treaties, an issue that this Parliament was first to highlight in the run-up to the Amsterdam negotiations; a task started by Amsterdam but far from complete and which, too, is a point underlined and highlighted in the Dehaene report.
In adding new issues like those to the IGC we are not necessarily making it more difficult. Having a wider package might make it easier to reach agreement and easier to ratify in our Member States but I can say, on behalf of my group, that we are willing to have Parliament work closely with the Commission in the spirit that Mr Barnier has just indicated, so that together we can put a balanced package of proposals on the table of the IGC that he, and our representatives to all the meetings of the IGC, can defend: a package that will make the Union fit to work when it has more than 20 Member States."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples