Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-14-Speech-2-013"
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"en.20000314.3.2-013"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the year 2000 must and will be a decisive year for Europe. In our debate on the five-year plan, we established that this year would mark the dawn of the “decade of Europe”, and it will therefore be a decisive year for the Commission. The explanation of the five-year plan provided us with the general reference framework and we have already set out the Commission’s Work Programme for the five-year term. In fact, within the space of the month which has passed since that debate, we have already started to take practical steps and have set off along the long road to enlargement to include the various applicant countries. This is a huge, wide-reaching, extremely important operation, and I would like to stress to the House that the Commission has put a great deal of work into it. There has been acknowledgement of my strong commitment to enlargement from various quarters, but the Commission’s commitment to allaying the fears of public opinion regarding this project has also been recognised. I would like to stress before the House that this is a solemn, important undertaking, which is not intended to put back enlargement, but to make enlargement possible in genuine, realistic, tangible terms. If we do not do this, we will reach a point where enlargement is no longer possible, whereas it is the current Commission’s main task for its five-year term of office.
With regard to transport, we are committed to creating a single European Airspace. Vice-President Loyola de Palacio is making tangible progress in this area, and the framework will be complete in a few months’ time. There is also the matter of the safety of maritime, as well as air transport, which is related to the issue of the environment and is of primary importance.
The last point covers consumer rights and health. The priority in terms of consumer rights is the safety of products and services. The citizens need clearer legislation in order to be protected against such dangers as misleading advertising. In this field the citizens do have the absolute right to be made completely aware of all the aspects of the product they are buying. We have prepared a health strategy, and we are going to adopt an action plan on health which will, of course, be related to the food safety programme which we discussed a short while ago. 2000 is the year which will see the completion of the proposal for the European Food Agency: we have already seen the White Paper and the autumn will bring the law which will implement this latest initiative. To this must be added other proposals on animal welfare which are currently being drawn up and which has featured prominently in the debates which have taken place over recent months.
These are the lines of reasoning behind the annual legislative programme. They differ from the reference framework of the five-year plan in that they are very detailed and tangible. I could, of course, give other examples in other areas, but the underlying features are a precise agenda, timeframes and responsible action. This is, so to speak, our daily turnover, the delivery of the products we have promised to the European citizens. In fact, these matters are of close relevance to all of our lives, and this is why Parliament’s role is absolutely crucial. Your role is to bridge the great divide between the institutions and the European citizens, and we must work together in order to be able to give the citizens quick, clear, tangible answers. The other day, we closed the debate with the statement that the measure of our success will be the number of European citizens who vote in the next European elections. I feel that the tangible measures I have touched on today are building up the citizens’ confidence in their government and fostering our relationship with them.
Thank you for your cooperation thus far. I invite you to double your efforts so that we can provide the tangible solutions which everyone expects from us.
We have started to implement the five-year plan with regard to the other two points to which we had committed ourselves as well: the modernisation of the Commission and preparation for the Intergovernmental Conference. Today, we are taking a different, more analytical approach to the debate, and the criticisms which were levelled at me during the last debate, which was only a general debate, were justified, as the five-year plan was too general. Today, you have before you an analytical, very comprehensive document, which is how the five-year plan should be. It is a specific plan of action, an extremely detailed document, which indicates the competent service, procedures, date of adoption, type of instrument and type of paper for each of the Commission’s initiatives, and the legal basis proposed for it. It outlines all the stages necessary for these decisions to become reality. Of course, and I am not saying this because I am here, in the presence of Parliament, but because it seems particularly important, we have placed particular emphasis on Parliament’s responsibilities in the codecision procedure. We have published the whole of this plan on the Internet, not to follow the trend – which is not a trend, but a major cultural development – but in order to make the plan available to all the citizens, so that they are able to hold it in their hands and use it as reference. Nowadays, there are no secret or private plans. This is a plan which can be used as a benchmark.
Let us now look at the major points of this plan. The underlying intention is to provide answers to the specific problems of the citizens. This is an annual programme, and it therefore needs to be detailed. We have touched on all the major points, including the environment, health, energy, transport and consumer protection, in addition to the major issue of justice.
Let us ponder this last point for a moment. Basically, the European citizens want justice in order to be able to live their daily lives in safety. I took this into consideration when I was talking about enlargement, because it is really very important for us to be aware of the overall picture. The Commission will put forward practical security proposals for increased coordination between Europe’s police forces and for a common action to fight crime, because we have major problems to deal with, including some new ones. There are fresh racial tensions, minority issues and basic problems of peaceful coexistence, and we must safeguard this coexistence, protect and regulate it. Therefore, this year, we are going to develop efficient measures governing emigration and the right to asylum. We will present tangible proposals on these matters during the course of this year. The line we are taking is very clear. We must combine openness, tolerance and hospitality with security and we will therefore also propose measures to increase the mutual recognition of civil and commercial law judgements.
The area of justice is essential if the internal market is to function properly. Without an area of justice, the internal market is merely theoretical and not a fully functional instrument. We will submit a scoreboard in order to take stock of our progress in this and other fields, a
chart showing the results we have achieved as well as the problem areas. We were requested to implement such a system in Tampere and undertook to do so, and the Common Area of Justice is therefore one of the fundamental objectives.
The environment is one of the most serious issues we have to deal with: every year, fresh problems arise which almost outweigh our successes. Our task is tantamount to a labour of Sisyphus. We must make every possible effort, because if we do not salvage our environmental policy and do so dramatically, it will be almost impossible to make up the lost ground. We have adopted a White Paper on environmental liability containing the strategy for achieving the goals set in Kyoto on the reduction of emissions; we must now work on the general legal framework for the environment as a whole and on the legal framework governing genetically modified organisms. We must also present an overall framework and a strategy for the European chemical industry, or our endeavours will indeed be fruitless.
Another area which I would like to mention as an example of the detailed nature of our plan, is an issue which is very closely related to the environment: fisheries and the exploitation of natural resources. We must set up a programme for reducing the number of fishing boats, as there is no longer a balance between catches and natural breeding. We must re-establish this balance and protect the environment, while, at the same time, we have a binding obligation towards those whose livelihood depends on fishing, and they are concentrated in some of the least industrialised areas in Europe. We will also make every effort to conclude the agreement with Morocco, and we will have to simplify European fisheries legislation, as the existence of 20 or so different regulations is creating disorder and does not ensure that that balance which we were discussing is maintained. Our point of reference for the environment is the 2002 Rio +10 Conference, which will take place ten years after the Rio Conference, and at this conference we must have tangible results to present.
Energy is a particularly important topic at this time, as I feel that Europe must increasingly make itself heard on matters of energy. After enlargement, we will be the largest consumers of energy in the world. We therefore undertake to present a document on the different energy sources, intended to safeguard resources."@en1
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