Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-151"
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"en.20000412.4.3-151"2
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"Madam President, the constitutional questions we are debating today are highly controversial, as the vote in committee clearly shows. In fact 12 Members voted for and 12 voted against. Of the latter, 8 voted against and 4 abstained. That is not something to be proud of. But I find it reassuring that so many Members agreed that the length of the shopping list of proposals contained in the report’s 52 paragraphs and 58 sub-paragraphs is exaggerated and that, as things stand, there is a risk that the Intergovernmental Conference will not take it seriously.
But unlike Talleyrand, I cannot console myself with the idea that what is exaggerated is by the same token insignificant. I want to dissociate myself from demands such as that we should cut my country’s delegation in the European Parliament by one third. I know that by head of population the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has more representatives here than the large countries, but that is a primitive and premature method of calculation. With 6 Members it is materially impossible to follow up all the dossiers that are crucial to our country. Moreover, we cannot sit on all the committees. It is easier to divide up the work and to specialise in a large delegation: even if the largest delegation, comprising 99 Members, was reduced by a third, they would still be able to share out the work. For the time being, it is enough to propose that the seats in the European Parliament should be allotted on the basis of a degressive proportional system, with a minimum number of seats per Member State, while of course respecting Article 190 of the Treaty.
The idea of European lists is premature, if not hare-brained. There can be no question of a majority of MEPs deciding the location of the seat of this Parliament here, against the views of the others: we must respect the Edinburgh compromise. In the case of a qualified-majority Council decision, it is inconceivable to provide for a simple majority of Member States. We must have a majority of two thirds of the Member States, even if that means providing at the same time for a simple majority of Member States representing a majority of the total EU population. There can be no question of restricting unanimous Council voting to decisions of a constitutional nature. We must also retain majority voting for fundamental questions, such as own resources, taxation and so forth. I hope the idea of not allocating one Commissioner to each Member State is well and truly dead. Finally, if we really need closer cooperation, it must involve at least half of the Member States, otherwise we risk ending up with something like the French Directory.
This document contains other incongruities too, especially in relation to the budget, which fortunately have no chance of success in the Council and even less chance of being ratified by national parliaments that have any self-respect. I will not vote for this shopping list unless it is amended along the lines I have just set out."@en1
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