Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-044"
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"en.20000412.2.3-044"2
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"Mr President, with the Dimitrakopoulos – Leinen report under discussion, the European Parliament is declaring its great vision for the European Union of the future. This is a truly historic moment, as has been stressed. Our fellow-citizens are waiting to be told what we are going to demand from the Intergovernmental Conference for that future.
Institutional proposals on particular issues without prior clarification of the basic philosophy of tomorrow’s Union of 27 are not convincing. The draft resolution is therefore quite right to define that basic view in the form of three principles. According to the draft, the European Union is, first and foremost, a Union of peoples and a Union of states. Its citizens therefore have both a European and a national identity. Secondly, it is based on an institutional equilibrium between large and small states. That must not be just on paper. Thirdly, the way the Union functions must be made more effective, so that it can cope with the major enlargement.
The above philosophical principles, to which the draft resolution remains faithful, are not metaphysical inventions of the European Parliament but arise from the history and from the political reality which we call the area of Europe. Anyone who ignores that is building a Europe founded on sand. The Intergovernmental Conference of 2000 is taking place to make the Union as effective as is required in view of the major enlargement that has been decided. In this process Parliament’s responsibility is very great indeed. For that reason, Parliament’s approval of enlargement cannot but depend on the adequacy of the institutional changes that will be decided. That is not a threat, it is a declaration of responsible attitude.
In good faith, all sides are trying, by means of amendments, to make the way in which European Union functions more effective. But is it enough for procedures to be simplified and speeded up for them to be described as effective? The effectiveness of a police service, which indeed demands both simplicity and speed, is quite different from the effectiveness of the fundamental institutions of a democratic public regime. The effectiveness of democratic institutions is not measured either with a stopwatch, or according to the number of decisions taken. It is measured by the degree of legitimacy. The dual legitimacy of the European Union by its European but also its national citizens, by its peoples but also its states, makes the European Union institutionally complex by its very nature. For that reason the extent to which these procedures can be simplified and speeded up is restricted by the whole complex system of dual legitimacy. We must bear that in mind tomorrow, when we come to vote on the amendments and the text."@en1
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