Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-15-Speech-2-032"
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"en.20000215.3.2-032"2
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"Madam President, this morning the Commission President, Mr Prodi, has set out ambitious goals for the European Union for the next five years, laudable aims indeed, to make a strong and effective European presence felt in the world: succeeding with enlargement, meeting the challenge of selling e-Europe, introducing better principles of governance. We accept that Europeans, particularly the younger generation, need to be given a broad perspective of where Europe will be in the years ahead. But how are we to succeed when the resources available are limited and the credibility of our institutions is not very high? We need to match this vision with reality. Here there are three elements I would like to contribute.
Firstly, we need a successful European economy. We must ensure that unemployment rates continue to go down across Europe, confirm the trend in privatisation and deregulation, encourage the insertion of information technology and knowledge of the Internet, show that e-Europe is a good initiative. But we must avoid lurching back into the old-style regulation, stifling individual initiative and enterprise. We must not fear globalisation, but we must also make sure that we understand its political impact in the network society. Without a successful European economy we cannot meet the challenges ahead, particularly of enlargement.
Secondly, we need to ensure that we legislate only when necessary – subsidiarity. Doing less but better – a central plank of the last Commission – needs to be the aim of this Commission too. We will be looking at this closely when we come to the annual programmes of proposed legislation. Mr Bonde was right to say that there is this image of doing less better and then suddenly we see an annual programme for the year 2000 of 500 proposals and recommendations, which seems to go in a different direction. We must establish priorities and make sure there is value for money in each of these programmes.
Lastly, we need to ensure that there is proper, genuine reform of the European Commission. Yes, the Commission – guardian of the Treaties – is meant to be an independent body, but it also has to be accountable to European citizens through our Parliament. The information problem, which Mr Bonde just referred to, is treated like a straw in the wind, with the Commission seeming to restrict information to us, as citizens and as parliamentarians, although we have the right to it under the Treaties.
The Commission is not in fact today a European government. The Commission does not reflect the majority in this particular Parliament. We in Parliament have a major role to play in the shaping of governance in Europe. This governance therefore needs to be a sensitive governance so that we can actually work together and understand that each of the institutions in the European Union, has its relevant role to play. Therefore we need to have credibility, coherence and confidence that in working together we can restore the image of the European Union to our citizens."@en1
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