Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-15-Speech-2-072"
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this strong, serious and constructive debate. It has been a calm debate with broad agreement over the basic points, but also where there has been a marked reassertion of Parliament’s rights and of the need for cooperation and dialogue between Parliament, the Commission and the Council. It has been a constructive debate for Europe.
Clearly this will compel us, as we have seen and as was the subject of a large part of my intervention, to rethink the concept of subsidiarity. I am grateful to Mr Poettering, Mr Cox and the others who mentioned this. This is the cornerstone of the programme. Too often, subsidiarity has been lauded in theory but has not been understood
in practice. We must give subsidiarity a material body and a political soul: this is the aim of the White Paper, which must put value back into Europe and recommend what practical action to undertake. I do not want to
devalue Europe, Mr Dell’Alba. I do not want to do shed the power to implement common policies; on the contrary, I want to consolidate, accelerate and improve the decisions and implementation of common policies, but at the same time I want to prevent our mechanisms becoming flooded with a large number of disjointed policies which, in reality, have little that is ‘common’ about them.
Let us remember how often we have been made into a laughing-stock because we deal with things that are absolutely ridiculous, which defy common sense and conflict with the interests of our population. Regarding this matter and this transformation, the Commission can and must be a real leader, relieved of useless burdens, given more credibility because it takes tangible form in its “core
business” and
because it does not make requests but instead rejects unnecessary tasks and powers. The Commission must become a driving force. As Mr Cox said, we should be an "enabling Europe" not an "including Europe", but very often we have been an “enabling Europe” on the one hand and an “including Europe” on the other.
My second guarantee is that these are not empty proposals. We have started work on them, not just as regards the internal reform of the Commission, together with Commissioner Kinnock, but also in some initial reforms of the structure of individual policies. I shall give you an example: if there is one policy that is important to the Commission, it is competition policy. Well, we have presented – and in January this House supported these hypotheses with an overwhelming majority – a programme for reform which will allow the Commission to concentrate on the fight against the most serious and important breaches of competition policy at European level, and we have begun a process of major cooperation with the national authorities on this.
We have done the same thing in the White Paper regarding the food sector. I have heard this being criticised – and I understand the criticism – that it is "has less powers than American Food and Drug Administration”. Well of course it does! I wanted to use the national authorities which are already active in this area. If I had used an organisational model such as the American one, you would now be rebelling and saying, “you have set up yet another centralised structure in Brussels!” This is Europe: this delicate balance between existing national structures which must be enhanced and put in a network with the European authority, and not humiliated by its presence. Just as enlargement is a difficult challenge, this is too because it has never before been attempted.
I welcome this broad unity over enlargement. There has hardly been any difference of opinion during this morning’s debate, and I welcome that because enlargement is a decision that is going to entail sacrifice for us and great changes within ourselves. At the time of the actual decision, here, we shall all have to be united in order to demonstrate that enlargement is in the interests of peace, prosperity and is taking place by way of a guarantee, as I said before, for our people, in addition to a guarantee for the countries which are attempting to enlarge.
I have no intention to proceed to an enlargement process that is not serious, strong and, above all – Mrs Muscardini was very attentive and made a justified remark about this – enlargement must not produce two types of members: the importance of enlargement stems precisely from the fact that, once a country joins this Union, it is the same as all the others. I said that we are a unity of minorities, a union of minorities: this is the extraordinary thing about the European Union. But enlargement is also about being strict. I was reminded about the nuclear power stations and the Danube. I have just been to Lithuania, Slovakia and Romania, three countries where we have had to request nuclear power stations to be closed. We did this, mindful of the serious problems for the local economies, but we explained that these are Europe’s rules and that this is a safety measure which everyone has to and will have to adopt. These countries understood that we have helped their transformation. They have undertaken to close the nuclear power plants, which is an enormous sacrifice for them. But this is Europe. Why the sacrifice? So that the goal, which is in the common interest, can be achieved.
It is also important to reach an agreement over Africa. I have heard a lot of impassioned interventions about Africa, which I also mentioned in my speech because Africa is one of the crosses we have to bear: Africa is neglected by everyone. I would remind you of the long journey the American President made in recent years which brought hope for a time, but then nothing came of it. Africa is principally one of our problems. Naturally, it is included in the hierarchy of the analyses of foreign policy we mentioned earlier; enlargement, the Mediterranean, Ukraine, Russia and the question of Africa, which is under discussion. Preparations for the Summit are progressing, but there are enormous difficulties: there are terrible divisions in Africa, and I am trying to reduce them too: I am trying to heal the rifts because if they remain, it would become impossible to launch a major policy to help such a desperate Africa. The Task Force in the development DG
is cooperating closely with the external relations DG
in order to include new sectors in their work on Africa too. We are starting to cooperate in the communication, education and science sectors. If we do not act in these sectors of civilisation, it will be impossible for Africa to act. Nevertheless, I am aware that we are still at the beginning and I would therefore ask for a great deal of openness and help from everyone.
I have also been rebuked for not having mentioned certain important sectors such as fisheries. It is true, I did not mention fisheries, and I did not even mention agriculture, schools or the whole of the major social policy on the elderly. I did not mention it because I believe that the five-year programme must set out the major policy lines regarding general development, but I am convinced of its enormous importance for cohesion and European solidarity. I assure you that there will be a commitment in this area because it is clear that it is a piece of the important mosaic that we have outlined in today’s debate.
It is precisely with these essential functions, with which we must ensure respect for our irreplaceable
political and moral role at Europe’s helm, that the Commission must strive to show the advantages and costs of our policies and to be very clear for a population that asks us for clarity, that asks us to be absolutely transparent. In this regard, I am reassured and encouraged by this debate. It reassures me because I have perceived a broad consensus on the basic lines of our programme and because I have the impression that its true substance has been understood. It has been a calm debate, as I said at the start, but not modest: on the contrary, it has been a debate with only a high political profile. So while the term “manifesto” might sound negative, it does, nevertheless, have an important value of its own and a sound political content. We have talked to each other with a language that Mr Barón Crespo described as plain and accessible. It emerged clearly, but forcefully that the challenges before us are the great political challenges that we must tackle together.
The document that I have presented has been described as a political manifesto with some internal contradictions. Mrs Hautala, I think you were almost right in saying this, because it is indeed a political manifesto. But it is not some abstract political manifesto, but a manifestation of political will which we need at this delicate stage for Europe. It is pointless to say that Europe is in crisis if we are then unable to issue a political manifesto, to discuss it, to dwell on it and to draw conclusions on it together.
This makes close collaboration between Parliament and the Commission even more important. I am encouraged by this. There are those who have not been persuaded by the debate, such as Mr Wurtz, who said in his statement that he welcomed the constructive spirit and added: “we have five years to succeed”. We are ready to collaborate. This is what I want, Mr Cox, and not because I have ever noticed I am living in a honeymoon period. You said that the honeymoon is over. I remember the honeymoon as being somewhat different, from the months we spent together, but I am pleased you used this term. In any case, this debate has further convinced me that the major challenges that lie ahead are political challenges. They require great energy, energy that will need to be intensified as the synergy between the institutions grows.
I would like to conclude by picking up on something Mr Barón Crespo mentioned. He mentioned something that is very important to me: Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco on Good Government, in Siena. If you recall, it is a fresco where everything works. There are people working, merchants, and hierarchies which can easily be seen in that Sienese society. It was a real five-year programme of the Community of Siena; it was their document whereby they tried to describe the society of the time. We can but admire this, because after all, it could serve as a point of reference. And Mr Barón Crespo, we cannot forget that the five-year programme was unable to exert any practical influence in the world; it disappeared from political manifestos when Siena's role in the world weakened. I think that we must avoid this danger.
So the contradictions between objectives and instruments which Mrs Hautala rightly pointed out, reflect contradictions in the current state of affairs in Europe. These are the contradictions that it is our duty to rectify and overcome. This is the importance of the political task we must tackle today. I have brought them out into the open without hiding anything. I am pleased that they have been given such prominence and also, sometimes, been asserted so forcefully
been given such importance, and this is why we want to change the instruments that we use to guide our action, Parliament’s action, my action, the action of all the European institutions; this is why we wanted an effective Intergovernmental Conference; this is why Helsinki signified a time of delicate change.
It has been written that we had given up the drive towards a stronger Europe, but then in Helsinki we rekindled the flames that we had managed to keep going until then. Cast your minds back – I recall this because it took place in this very Chamber – to the speech given by the President of the French Republic on the issues of reinforced cooperation which reopened a dialogue that appeared closed prior to this. I hope our tenacity in maintaining our positions in Helsinki will be rewarded at the Intergovernmental Conference, which will culminate with the Nice Summit.
We have been reminded by everyone – not just by Mr Poettering and Mr Fiori, but many speakers – of globalisation and the difficulties this is causing us in our lives and policies. The Commission wants globalisation. It sees it as positive because it is providing a minimum amount of dignity for billions of people marginalised by the global market, and because it is thanks to globalisation that a new day is dawning in China and India for, I repeat, billions of people.
I hope that globalisation will continue to have this positive aspect in the future, but – and this is going to be one of our major commitments in the future – it leads to problems in poor countries and in our countries, problems that we must address. And it also leads to problems in the weakest sectors of our countries. This means examining our conscience over the practical action we must take from day to day, because it is clear that globalisation is causing our society to diverge, increasing poverty, giving more grounds for anger
causing wide differences in salaries, even in sectors which seem similar, and we need to focus our attention on this.
Clearly, when our young graduates notice differences in salaries, small or large depending on the type of employment they are in, and when the financial sector pays wages that are X number of times higher than someone working in research, for example, all of this creates problems relating to the organisation of our future society. We need to deliberate carefully over this, and – I am responding to Mr Trentin – frankly we still have not, or at least I still have not prepared a complete response in this regard. I started to respond in Lisbon, by attempting to reduce the marginalisation of an entire age group, that is, to provide all the young people of Europe with new instruments for communication, broadly reunite all the European schools and create new opportunities to prevent geographical and social marginalisation in Europe. This still does not go far enough towards controlling globalisation, or at least understanding the consequences of globalisation, but it is a substantial and necessary response.
In recent weeks, Commissioner Lamy also vigorously proposed a response at global level on behalf of the Commission: to rebuild confidence in the development of the Third World that was put in such serious jeopardy at Seattle and to repropose a role for the WTO with a wide agenda able to address the challenge of globalisation. In Geneva, the Commission proposed an extraordinarily bold short-term packet which complies with many of your requests. It proposed unilaterally reducing customs duties to zero for the 38-40 poorest countries – unilaterally, completely and across the board; it proposed reforming the WTO’s procedures and greater transparency; it proposed giving a response to the developing countries over issues relating to the promotion
of this measure. If these measures gain support
over the next few days, the Commission – as it has already announced – will vigorously proceed with the relaunching of the Round for summer, and therefore its resumption.
We are trying to repair the damage done in Seattle. This is the Commission’s major task, and together, we plan to reform the WTO and establish a place for the Commission within it, and the Commission will at last study the matter in great depth because it has not been done in recent years. This is an initial practical response in a five-year programme, which is not there to provide responses on individual issues but to provide these major policy lines, extracts
from our future action, extracts where Parliament’s supervision is essential, as is collaboration between Parliament and the Commission. The synergies between the Commission, Parliament and the Council are essential, Mr Cox."@en1
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