Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-17-Speech-3-246"
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"en.19991117.7.3-246"2
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"Mr President, we already know about some of the issues that will be discussed at the forthcoming WTO negotiations: they are the so-called “left-overs” from Amsterdam. However, at the moment, we are not fully aware of what issues will feature at the start of the forthcoming IGC and these are issues that must be discussed, particularly with a view to achieving efficiency and with a view to an enlargement that it is thought will happen and which is greatly desired. I would like to say here that reforming a Treaty with a view to achieving efficiency strikes me as a very unambitious exercise for the European project, and I fear that this exercise may be nothing but a power game which will allow a small group of countries to set themselves up as a board of directors and to lead and direct the European project.
A Europe led by a board of directors would be a negation of the stimulating process of European integration that we have had – it is true that it has its imperfections, but all countries have taken part in it – and, in our opinion, strengthened cooperation must be the exception and not the rule in the European Union. This is because often, the political will to cooperate exists, but the conditions are not right from the economic point of view or from some other point of view, in order to achieve this very will for strengthened cooperation.
Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, let me give you an example of this: if there were a change to the weighting of votes within the Council, which would mean that the countries with a higher population as well as the larger countries would in fact have more power, and if the extension of qualified majority voting, extended to the codecision procedure, meant that this tendency in the European Parliament also became more marked, my question is: what role will the European Union’s small or weak countries have in Europe?
I prefer cohesion to efficiency, and as Commissioner Barnier raised the issue a while ago of there being 27 of us in Europe, I would like to say, Commissioner, that I think that in the decisions of this Europe of 27, it is more important that all countries feel involved in the decision-making process, than discussing whether, when there are 27 of us, it will take us one hour, less than two hours or three hours to take decisions.
Cohesion is more important than efficiency if we are in fact to have a European Union with as cohesive and generous an enterprise as the one that we have seen and in which we have participated."@en1
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