Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-27-Speech-3-061"
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"en.19991027.2.3-061"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the Union for a Europe of Nations Group considers the Dehaene report on the institutional implications of enlargement to be unsatisfactory in terms of both its method and the greater part of its conclusions.
Firstly, its method. The Cologne Council, last June, refused to appoint a limited working party to prepare the work of revising the Treaty. It did want discussions to be more open from the outset. And what did we find? The Commission, piqued at not having been able to control the debate completely, hastened to appoint a limited working party on its own account, which was immediately described as a Committee of Wise Men even though its members are no wiser than most people here today. All this in order to attempt to force the Council to retain the conference agenda which the Commission wanted. It is not surprising, in such conditions, to see that the Dehaene report, basically, is seeking to strengthen the powers of the Commission and circumvent the rights of the States. First of all, by a strange coincidence, this text concludes that, from the very beginning of the Intergovernmental Conference, the Commission will have to submit a complete draft Treaty to the Council. It is simply a continuation of the same old method of forcing decisions through.
In the same spirit, the working party puts forward the old federalist proposal of making qualified majority voting the general rule in the Council. This proposal, combined with maintaining the Commission’s monopoly of initiative, would ultimately end, as we know, in a considerable strengthening of the Commission’s powers and a concomitant reduction in the rights of States. For that matter, it is quite interesting to note that the system of majority voting is presented in the report, in a fine example of European Newspeak, as, I quote, “leading to consensus”, whereas, obviously, the opposite is true. Majority rule obliges the minority to give way, especially the smaller States, whereas the requirement for unanimity makes it necessary to negotiate until a consensus is obtained.
Again, in the same spirit of circumventing State power, the Dehaene report proposes that the Treaty may, in some cases, be modified by a simple Council decision, and even on the basis of a decision taken by qualified majority alone. This is absolutely unacceptable, since it stands in absolute contradiction to our concept of a Europe which respects its nations. Apart from the usual federalist clichés, the report does, however, tentatively sketch out one new idea, the idea of the institutional flexibility required in an enlarged Europe. It acknowledges what we have always said, that the cases of strengthened cooperation outlined by the Treaty of Amsterdam go in no way towards resolving the twofold problem of increasing heterogeneity and the absolute impossibility of giving up sovereign powers in favour of procedures for decision by qualified majority and, what is more, in a Europe comprising thirty or more States. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the real subject that must be included on the agenda of the IGC, and a second subject, “how to restore national control in Europe” should be added to the first, since it too posits the free exercise of national sovereignty."@en1
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