Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-136"
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"en.20000412.4.3-136"2
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"Madam President, aside from the letter of the report, I want to draw attention to a few of the numbers contained in it.
First number: 700. Limiting the number of Members of the European Parliament to 700 would not be a cause for concern were it not that it would render our Parliament less representative. By marginalising small countries, while at the same time allowing high electoral thresholds to be set up in the largest ones, this sordid electoral mechanism would prevent whole sections of European society from being represented any more in this Chamber. We must reaffirm that it is our Parliament’s prime and absolute task to represent the people and the peoples of Europe in all their diversity.
Second number: two thirds. Two thirds of the vote is the majority required for our Parliament to censure the Commission. This very high threshold of two thirds is a sad and unique case. For what European government can boast of being so safe from any real parliamentary control, of having such impunity? We must create a formal symmetry. If a simple majority is good enough for the investment of the Commission, then the same majority should suffice for a vote of no confidence. The people’s representatives have the power to undo anything they have done. That is the rule everywhere, and it must be the rule here too.
Third and last number: 2009. The report proposes the year 2009 as the date for electing MEPs from transnational lists. Now this is a case of either or: either our Parliament decides this measure is not a good one, which would mean abandoning it – even in 2009 – or, like the Greens, it must admit that such lists are vital if we want to create real families of thought in Europe, in which case this important political debate can begin by the time of the 2004 elections. Otherwise we would be being neither lucid nor ambitious enough.
Nor does this report, which, without being bad, does not match up to the issues at stake, seem very lucid or ambitious. In changing size, the European Union will change in nature. So our continent will have to rethink its rules rather than simply tidy them up. This timid IGC 2000 can in no way represent an end result, but only the first step towards a constitution."@en1
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