Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-01-Speech-3-058"
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"en.19991201.7.3-058"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union’s Heads of State and Government will shortly be gathering in Helsinki with a very busy agenda in front of them. First of all, I would like to congratulate the Finnish Presidency on all the hard work and careful planning it has put into preparing this European Council. Thanks to these efforts, the Summit will, I am sure, be a great success.
Then there is the work begun at Tampere on drafting a Charter of Fundamental Rights and the possible restructuring of the Treaty, separating its basic, essential texts from its implementing provisions. This would make the essential texts simpler to read and allow the less essential ones to be amended via a less cumbersome procedure. I do not underestimate the difficulties, both technical and political. As a first step, the Commission will ask academic experts to carry out a detailed feasibility study on this project. In this respect, I intend to ask the European University Institute of Florence – which has specialists in this subject from all European countries – to study this matter. Once this has been done we shall have to carefully consider how to proceed with this idea.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, all these issues must be tackled if our institutions are to function effectively in an enlarged European Union. Above all, it is essential that we scale down the number of decisions that still have to be taken unanimously. Maintaining unanimous voting will result either in complete paralysis or in everything being reduced to the lowest common denominator, a luxury we cannot afford in today’s world, where immediate action is called for in areas of vital importance to the European Union’s future.
Finally, one more example: trade talks are beginning in Seattle, and the EU must punch its full weight in these negotiations. In the wake of the Tampere Summit, the Heads of State and Government are including justice and home affairs as a priority area. The European tax package is now in great difficulty. Yet it is not only an important initiative to combat harmful tax competition but also an essential aspect of our employment strategy. If we continue to burden our jobs with taxes, as we have done until now, our employment policy will certainly be contradictory. On all these three fronts, Europe is handicapped by the unanimity requirement. It is like a soldier trying to march with a ball and chain around one leg. I hope that Helsinki, by launching the reform process, will clearly show we have the ambition and the political will to rid ourselves of this encumbrance and to tackle the other crucial issues before us.
The European Parliament will, of course, be fully involved in the IGC. The European Union exists for its citizens, whom you represent, and the reforms we are planning must serve their interests. That is why I look forward to seeing this House play a key role in the reform process and in building the enlarged Europe of tomorrow.
One of the main items on the agenda at Helsinki will, of course, be enlargement. In the composite paper issued last month, the Commission argued strongly for the need to maintain the momentum of reform in the candidate countries. These countries have already made considerable efforts in order to meet, with time, the Copenhagen criteria. Our task is now to reward their great efforts in such a way as to encourage further progress while dispelling complacency. If we fail to give our recognition, some of these countries may become disillusioned and turn their backs on us: their economies would start to diverge, progress towards democracy and respect for human rights may mark time and an historic opportunity will have been lost, perhaps forever. This is why we need a swift but surefooted accession process, and I certainly hope the Helsinki Summit will adopt the accession strategy we recommended in October and will decide, provided the necessary conditions are met, to start accession negotiations next year with Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Slovakia.
What I am hoping to see emerge from Helsinki, therefore, is a fully flexible, multi-speed accession process under which negotiations with each of the twelve candidate countries proceed in parallel with its political and economic progress. This system, which has been compared to a regatta, allows each country to move at its own pace, be assessed on its own merits and join when it is finally able to meet all the obligations of membership.
I hope that the European Council will grant Turkey the official status of a candidate country. Clearly, accession negotiations cannot be opened with Turkey until it meets the Copenhagen political criteria, with their clear emphasis on human rights, respect for minorities and complete religious freedom. I, too, in this respect, would remind you of what the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs said about the serious Öçalan case. However, by granting it candidate status, we would be giving Turkey a definite incentive to continue moving in the right direction.
Another important item on the agenda at Helsinki will, of course, be the Intergovernmental Conference which must carry out the institutional reforms needed to prepare the EU for enlargement. I hope the Summit will agree to launch this conference very soon, because the enlargement process will be beginning in about three years' time and it will continue, uninterrupted, for a good few years after that. In practice, this means the necessary reforms must be in place by the end of 2002 if we are to be ready on schedule. Therefore, since a long time is needed for ratification, our time is short.
What are the necessary institutional reforms? The major ones were outlined in the conclusions of the Cologne Summit and discussions on their scope began with the report I commissioned from Mr Dehaene, Mr Von Weizsäcker and Lord Simon. Parliament has tabled contributions, as has the Commission in the document we issued on 10 November The Presidency is due to report its findings to the European Council. I believe there is a growing agreement among us on the question of which reforms are needed. First, there are the issues specifically referred to at Amsterdam, namely the number of Commissioners, the representation of Member States in the Council and the extension of qualified majority voting. These three issues are, in any case, interrelated.
Secondly, there are matters arising from those issues. For example, enlargement will have an impact on all the other European institutions and bodies, such as the Court of Justice and, indeed, this House which, as new Member States join, will have to make room for up to 700 representatives, and not more than 700. Furthermore, the codecision procedure will have to be extended to legislation for which qualified majority voting itself has already been extended.
Finally, there are matters for which preparatory work is to be done outside the IGC but which might, towards the end of the conference, be included in the Treaty or affect it in one way or another. I am thinking, for example, of specific issues: firstly, discussions on security and defence. The European Council will adopt important decisions in this field and on the management of the non-military aspects of international crises. The Commission has been closely involved in the policy-making process, as a result of which new operational structures will be set up. They will enable us to travel further along the route towards integration, already traced in Cologne.
I welcome these important developments and I undertake to do all I can at Helsinki to help bring them about and to ensure that they are consistent with the EU's institutional framework. The Commission intends to commit itself to fully implementing the decisions adopted by the Heads of State and Government, particularly the decisions on procedures for providing assistance during international crises. Implementation will involve not only providing financial assistance, which must be guaranteed, but also sending experts to carry out emergency work on the ground. This will call for our services to put a lot of effort into its organisation and management. These are certainly issues that cannot be ignored. More generally, I would like to point out that a common foreign and security policy requires the creation of a European defence industry that can compete efficiently in both technological and financial terms. The Commission intends to promote this by using all the instruments at its disposal relating to the internal market, commercial and competition policies. I am in favour of the changes that are now taking place."@en1
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