Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-15-Speech-2-044"
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"en.20000215.3.2-044"2
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"Madam President, the Commission is today presenting its strategic objectives for 2000-2005. These are contained in an extremely general document in which all the problems have been glossed over to prevent any conflict.
So, in the first part on the new forms of European governance, the words ‘federalism’ and ‘superstate’ are not mentioned at all. Yet these are the main themes in any discussion of strong European institutions in which only day-to-day tasks of execution are decentralised and a collective vision is promoted within an indistinct whole. In this scenario the governments and national parliaments are merged with the regional and even local authorities and with the civil society, all of which are described, with no form of hierarchy, as ‘integral elements of European governance’.
These ambiguities mask many misunderstandings, primarily about our values. It is not enough to claim to adhere to democracy in order to be a democrat. It must clearly be accepted that the people should be free to make their decisions at the level which best combines the objective conditions of an immediate, fair and transparent democratic debate, namely at national level in the main.
Yet the whole of the Commission communication is based on the opposite theory. In this theory, on the pretext of ensuring the best protection for peoples, their margin of independent choice should be increasingly limited by new regulations, new policies or new, restrictive legal structures such as the draft Charter of Fundamental Rights. This Charter is really misnamed because it will actually reduce these rights.
In the Union for a Europe of Nations Group our principles are rather different. Clearly we want to defend the countries of Europe but we also want to respect the autonomy of nations. This is not impossible. We must move away from the outmoded federalist schemes promoted by those whose every idea on European matters comes from the Memoires of Jean Monnet. Instead, we must open the European institutions to the modern world by creating a flexible dynamic which respects nations.
This is the keynote idea on the new governance which we would have liked to have seen in your communication, Mr Prodi, but which is unfortunately not there."@en1
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