Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-053"
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"Mr President, Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, after listening carefully to the two rapporteurs, to all the committee representatives and to Mr Gama, the Portuguese Minister, and before listening just as carefully to all the speakers in the further course of the debate, let me explain the views of the Commission which, as you know, is playing an active part in these negotiations, in which I too was involved from the outset, along with your representatives and the representatives of the Member States.
My second comment relates to the active involvement of your Parliament, which is vital to our success. Because the European Parliament has its own special perspective on things, I want to stress how necessary Parliament’s commitment is, the commitment of each and everyone of you, first of all during the negotiations – as your representatives in the negotiating teams, Elmar Brok and Professor Tsatsos, are well aware, and indeed their contributions often put the discussions back into perspective – but also during the ministerial discussions. And I must say I was pleased with the most recent joint discussions that took place with your President, Nicole Fontaine, in Luxembourg the day before yesterday at the initiative of the President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Gama.
But I also want to emphasise how important it is for us, outside our official and institutional establishments, to explain our activities and engage in dialogue with the national parliaments and the citizens of every EU country and with the candidate countries.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude by drawing attention to three particular aspects, while also noting that as we speak today a number of questions about the correct scope of the agenda of these negotiations have to some extent now been resolved. I think that is a good thing. In saying that, I want to pay tribute to the Portuguese Presidency and in particular to Jame Gama and to Franciscos Seixas da Costa for electing to adopt a pragmatic and objective approach, an approach that is as objective as possible and that consists in starting out from the needs and limitations of the existing system and proposing solutions. That suggests that we can work on the basis of the Helsinki mandate as long as today’s presidency has the political will to give an impetus to tomorrow’s French Presidency.
Although this is a reasonably substantial and difficult agenda, there are still a few subjects that have been left aside for the time being, which we regret.
I would like to tell you how much I appreciate the very high quality of the report presented by your two rapporteurs, Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos and Jo Leinen, which we are now debating. The report is clear and comprehensive. The Committee on Constitutional Affairs has set out a determined position and I want to pay tribute to its work and that of its chairman, Mr Napolitano.
I have two comments to make on the report. The first is that, objectively speaking, the positions of your committee, which will probably be shared by the House when you come to the vote, are in many respects very close to the Commission’s. Parliament, like the Commission, has sized up the challenge facing the Union with the prospect of an unprecedented increase in the number of Member States which, by the same token, will accentuate their diversity. Your Parliament is aware that the reform of the institutions is necessary, that it must be tackled seriously and that, if need be, we must look beyond short-term national interests and offer the people a Treaty that is substantial enough to gain their support.
That is what is at stake in these negotiations, which we must bring to a successful conclusion at the end of this year, at the European Council in Nice. I would stress the ‘success’ rather than the ‘concluding’, for they are two different things. And success is what we need in Nice.
These changes are essential to the success of enlargement. In my view they are also necessary right now because in many respects the current institutional organisation is showing its limitations. I am thinking, for example, of the Court of Justice’s workload and of the log-jams we see in some areas because of the requirement of unanimity in the Council. Your Parliament has looked in depth at the decision-making system in the Council and at the composition and functioning of the Commission.
Since 26 January you have been well aware of the positions set out by the Commission. For example, to make things quite clear with regard to the Commission itself, we proposed that each country should certainly have one Commissioner. But we also proposed two options on that basis. Either every country will have a national representative within the Commission at the same time, or not all countries will be represented at any one time. But, if you look at those two options I have briefly described, you will find that the states will be represented on an equal footing, which is not currently the case within the Commission. On this issue, as on others, we believed it was important, over and above the basic approach, to open up a debate, to take time to consider the pros and cons of the different options, and to decide between gut reactions that would consist of changing as little as possible and the long-term requirements of giving our institutions new impetus. Negotiations on these issues have scarcely begun. Whatever solutions are finally adopted, your debates, like ours, will help the Intergovernmental Conference to take more responsible and enlightened decisions.
I note there is broad convergence on the qualified majority issue. Qualified majority voting should become the general rule for Council decisions, together with the codecision procedure for all matters that come within the legislative sphere. The Commission itself said just that and recommended a means of achieving these results by identifying the categories of decision where unanimity must or could be retained. We are well aware that certain Member States have difficulties with some of these questions. We know there are reservations about the tax system, to give just one example.
What the Commission, what the European Parliament must do is precisely to look beyond these reservations and sincerely, honestly and without any ideological bias consider the coherence and effectiveness of the single market. That is what we wanted to do with our additional contribution which describes the new area of qualified majority voting in relation to certain aspects of the tax system, certain aspects of social protection, to ensure the smooth operation of the single market.
There is agreement between our positions on other points too, such as the composition of the European Parliament, closer cooperation, the creation of a new European Public Prosecutor’s office which, as Mrs Theato pointed out, will help us to fight fraud against the Community budget, the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance. And that does not surprise me, since the Commission and the European Parliament have always been very close in their thinking on these subjects and are inspired by the same concern for the general interest of Europe. We will continue along these lines until the negotiations reach their conclusion."@en1
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