Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-19-Speech-3-019"
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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me to be here in the European Parliament to present the Portuguese Presidency’s action programme for the first half of the year 2000. Members will already be familiar with the text of this programme, so I shall restrict myself to emphasising some of the most relevant points.
I am speaking to you today in honest and frank terms, because I do not want to give rise to any false hopes. In this context, I would also like to refer to a point which is of concern to the Portuguese Presidency, or rather one which has always concerned my country, even before it held the presidency: the way in which the European Parliament is represented at this Intergovernmental Conference. On this point, which we all recognise to be a sensitive one, our approach – without wishing to deviate from the precise terms of the Helsinki conclusions – is to go as far as possible in involving Parliament, either in the formal manner laid down in those conclusions or else by means of some informal framework under which this institution is content to rely on collaboration with the presidency. Although it has to be said that the model for representation adopted is better than the arrangements applying to the European Parliament during the negotiations on the Treaty of Amsterdam, we believe it is important to work in a way that promotes the establishment of an atmosphere of confidence and effective collaboration between the Council and Parliament. With this in mind, I have taken the opportunity to write to the President of the European Parliament explaining that our presidency intends to initiate the work of the Intergovernmental Conference at a special Ministerial Meeting at the time of the February General Affairs Council, as agreed in Helsinki. Therefore, at the beginning of each conference at ministerial level, there will be an opportunity to exchange views with you, Madam President, and with two representatives of this House.
On the other hand, this body will have two observers at all the meetings of the preparatory group to be chaired by the State Secretary for European Affairs. In my letter, I added that the presidency is committed to guaranteeing effective involvement of the European Parliament in the debate on the agenda of the IGC. We are open to ideas for our involvement in any other ways of working which Parliament may consider suitable, as long as they are in accordance with the Helsinki conclusions. I would like to assure you that you can rely on us as far as this joint work is concerned.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union can only assert its role in the world in defending its principles and its interests if we succeed in giving Europe a credible voice, and if we succeed in providing an effective response to the crises arising in strategic areas that we cannot ignore. Although opinions may differ, the Kosovo crisis provided, and is still providing, all of us with a lesson from which we need to draw the necessary conclusions. I believe that now more than ever, it has become evident that Europe needs to have its own resources for taking effective and timely action in crisis management and in carrying out operations to ensure peace and stability in areas which are vital for our collective security.
The Helsinki European Council gave the Portuguese Presidency the task of implementing new security and defence mechanisms in the European context, mechanisms compatible with the commitments entered into by some of us within the Atlantic Alliance, and with the specific situations applying to some of our partners in the European Union. Furthermore, it is important that we should be able to guarantee that this new way of working is compatible overall with the interests of our partners in NATO, either at European level or in the transatlantic context.
During these six months, we will test the combined will to work in this area, and we will seek to achieve an organisational model which is acceptable in view of the various sensibilities and interests at stake. This is admittedly a difficult task, but we are convinced that this is a challenge of major importance for the credibility of external action by the Union, and we will, of course, seek to take advantage of the various possibilities offered by our simultaneous presidencies of the European Union and of the Western European Union.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, remaining on the subject of the Union’s external relations, I would like to make some further comments on this area in my speech and to emphasise certain additional aspects of the Portuguese Presidency’s programme.
We believe that Europe’s efforts to equip itself with solid and effective internal institutions must always go hand in hand with close attention to events outside the European Union. Europe has always gained from preserving an active and open external dimension and from refusing to turn in on itself and thus shying away from the challenges of the outside world. We now need to be forward-looking in our external relations and to make our presence felt on the world stage in an effective manner. Accordingly, the Portuguese Presidency intends to implement a set of actions which will promote and strengthen Europe’s presence in the world, both by following up the traditional relationships already in existence and by promoting new initiatives in areas that we believe have an essential place at the heart of the European agenda.
We will, of course, be paying special attention to the grave situation in the Balkans and to relations with Russia and Ukraine, and in particular to the sources of tension affecting this area close to the European Union. Furthermore, we intend to ensure that the Mediterranean area remains one of the priorities of our external agenda, to which end we will be taking various initiatives under the Barcelona process and we will be seeking to guarantee visible intervention by the Union in the Middle East peace process. One important initial step here was my recent tour of this region, during which, accompanied by the High Representative for the common foreign and security policy and by a representative of the Commission, I visited Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.
It remains our intention to develop an integrated political dialogue with Africa as a whole, and to ensure that the process established under the Lomé Convention progresses satisfactorily in future.
Latin America will rightly occupy a special place in this framework for external action, in view of the increasing importance of this region for Europe and the complementary interests that now link us to that part of the world.
I would like to start by saying that my country understands that the presidency’s work should not just address the need for efficiency at Council level, but should also involve a major cooperation effort in conjunction with all the Community institutions and bodies. This should go hand in hand with a continuing public perception of transparency in the presidency’s activities. We will need to pay particular attention to the relationship between the Portuguese Presidency and the European Parliament, in view of Parliament’s special interinstitutional role, and because of its legitimacy as a result of its direct mandate from the citizens of Europe’s various countries. This is the first message I would like to convey to you, together with a guarantee that the presidency will always be available to clarify matters and to achieve full and frank cooperation with this Chamber.
The transatlantic dialogue with the United States and Canada will also be an important part of our agenda, particularly as regards our joint participation in the Euro-Atlantic institutions and, above all, our commitment to relaunching the debate within the World Trade Organisation in the near future.
There are many other initiatives I could mention, especially in the multilateral context and in the framework of bilateral political dialogue. However, I shall restrict myself to the new initiatives of a summit with India and ministerial meetings with Australia and New Zealand.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I do not wish to make this speech very much longer, in order to allow time for questions, which I will be delighted to answer. Nevertheless, I would not like to finish without mentioning two key priorities which will underpin our work, and also one issue directly related to the working of this Chamber. The first issue is justice and home affairs. This is probably one of the most promising areas for increased EU activity following Amsterdam. In this field we are expecting concrete proposals from the European Commission which will enable us to make the establishment of an area of freedom, security and justice a reality, thus living up to our citizens’ expectations of the European project.
The second issue is food safety. We are, at present, involved in an extremely delicate situation at European level: an atmosphere of suspicion now prevails, which has implications for the internal market and is having a negative impact on the area of consumer protection, as well as affecting our external relations. We believe that it is important to reverse this trend. It has therefore become essential for us to provide a harmonised framework for work at European level, in particular by establishing an agency able to coordinate the various national dimensions. The concept recently proposed by the Commission in its White Paper will be appropriately addressed during the Portuguese Presidency, chiefly through a report to be submitted to the Feira European Council in June.
Lastly, I would like to make it clear that the statute for Members of the European Parliament and their assistants will be properly dealt with by the Portuguese Presidency, as we consider it essential to resolve this important issue, which impinges on the dignity of everyone’s work in this institution. We will do our best here to ensure, by means of a dialogue with yourselves and by working together within the Council, that we can obtain a fair and balanced solution to this problem.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, these are the main messages that I would like to convey to you on behalf of the Portuguese Government as the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union gets under way. I shall, of course, be delighted to give any additional explanations that you may require. Many thanks for your attention.
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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, this is a decisive moment for Europe in defining its model of political and economic organisation and in affirming its identity on the world stage in the face of the new challenges which it knows it must respond to. The plan to create conditions for stability and development throughout our continent, which is the major political objective of the present generation in Europe, means that we are obliged to make a number of choices that will have an impact on the future shape of the Union itself. In recent years, we have managed to achieve very significant progress in establishing the internal market and gradually consolidating the single currency, an ambitious project indeed. We now need to go further: we must guarantee that this progress is matched by parallel developments in other policies, so as to achieve a more coherent process which addresses the key concerns and fears of the public in Europe. If we are unable to use the instruments at our disposal, by which I mean the Europe that we have already built, in an effective and convincing manner, then it will clearly be impossible to persuade our citizens to accept the building of a greater Europe.
The Portuguese Presidency will seek to ensure that the European social model will, in future, evolve in a way that is compatible with maintaining the Union’s capacity to lead the way in economic competitiveness at world level. With a view to assisting the realisation of this project, we will be organising a Special European Council in March with the theme of "employment, economic reform and social cohesion – towards a Europe of innovation and knowledge".
Some of you may be asking what we hope to achieve with this initiative. Will this idea bring any added value to what has already been achieved? Or is it Portugal’s intention to initiate a new process to add to those already drawn up in Luxembourg, Cardiff and Cologne? These are valid questions and you already have part of our reply before you in the document that the Portuguese Prime Minister announced two days ago. We intend, through this project, to create better links, better coordination between the existing processes, but, at the same time, to introduce a new dimension. We must ensure that Europe is given a fresh impetus which will enable it, within 10 years, to turn itself into the most dynamic and active economic area in the world. To this end it is important to ensure that Europe’s economy can make the best use of all the instruments at its disposal and, in particular, that it does not get left behind in the key battle for competitiveness. As we see it, the current phase of this battle is the democratisation of the information and knowledge society at European level, thus radically closing the gap in this field between Europe and the other areas with which it is competing in the globalised economy. It is this push towards the modernisation, up-dating and synergy of new resources that we intend to launch at the European Council in Lisbon. We are relying on everyone – on this Parliament, on our social partners, on other areas of civil society, and, of course, on the governments of the Member States – to achieve this essential objective.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the political divide in Europe was eliminated some years ago. The unification of Europe has now become a strategic objective which the European Union has to address in its entirety and about which we can have no hesitation. For decades, peoples suffering restrictions on their freedom of expression were told that here, on this side of Europe, we were constructing a model of liberty and progress that we want everyone to share. The time has now come to show that we meant what we said. The plan to enlarge the European Union and all the contractual models that we intend to establish with other European countries all point in the same direction: towards guaranteeing a wide area of stability and development to provide Europe as a whole with a future based on peace and progress.
The Portuguese Presidency is faced with the important task of ensuring continuity in the enlargement negotiations which started in 1998, based on rigorous technical criteria and an evaluation of the objective merit of each of the applicant countries. It is our intention to open all the possible negotiating chapters with these countries swiftly and efficiently, on the basis of proposals submitted by the European Commission. In the case of the six applicant countries just starting negotiations now, we will also do our utmost to guarantee that they are given an opportunity to make up for any lost time, without allowing this to have the slightest impact on the negotiations already under way. Turkey, which is a special case, deserves our particular attention, in view of the special situation involved and the need to ensure clear prospects of closer ties with the Union for this country, which occupies a pivotal place on the world scene. Enlargement is, therefore, a European objective which the Portuguese Presidency will not shrink from and which it will endeavour to take forward.
The European Union considers that if enlargement is to take place, it will be essential to reform the Union’s own institutions so that they function in a more democratic, effective and transparent manner. Some of these reforms can be implemented without amending the Treaties, by improving the working methods of our institutions. Other reforms require treaty amendments, which will be formulated in the course of an Intergovernmental Conference that we will convene in a matter of weeks, with the aim of concluding the conference by the end of this year. This is, of course, a difficult and delicate task, because it involves the management of decision-making powers within the Union. It is our intention here to initiate a model that brings together both ambition and realism, that it to say a model that goes as far as is possible and necessary within a consensus guaranteeing the acceptability of the outcome to the Member States by the end of 2000. The need to respect that date, as everyone will be aware, relates to the fact that any prolongation of the debate could result in delays in the enlargement process, which would inevitably have negative political effects that cannot be ignored.
We are aware of the risk that this new reform process may fall short of some people’s expectations, and we are conscious of the legitimate desire felt by many Members of this House to go further. I can assure you that the Portuguese Presidency will do everything in its power, in line with the mandate conferred upon it at Helsinki, to ensure that the agenda of this conference comprises topics which provide a basis for substantial reform. However, whilst giving this undertaking of the presidency’s commitment, I cannot, of course, guarantee any miracles and, in particular, I cannot promise that the combined will of the governments of the Member States will match your own expectations and wishes."@en1
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