Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-156"
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"en.20000412.4.3-156"2
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"Madam President, with your permission I should like to use this brief opportunity at the end of this debate to respond to something which was raised in a point of order at the start of this sitting. I consider this to be the Council’s legitimate right.
Comments were made about the Council’s absence during the address by the Austrian President to this Parliament. I must say firstly, to clarify matters, that the Council presidency was not supposed to be present nor was this Parliament’s understanding. We did not have any indication from the President of this House that we should attend for what was purely a parliamentary matter. Secondly, I must say that, on questions of political responsibility, the Council refuses to be given lessons and be subjected to pressure by something that has much more to do with the internal chicanery of Portuguese national politics than properly with matters of substance. In my opinion, this House has ended up being used as a kind of platform for political provocation and we will not accept this situation.
There is a clear boundary around the work of the Portuguese presidency with regard to the functioning of the institutions and the role of Austria in these institutions. This was totally obvious from my intervention in this House when this issue was first debated. Within the European Union we have met all the requirements allowing Austria to act and participate fully in the European institutions and in their own functioning as a country. We are therefore not confusing any of our positions and we refuse, due to a mere internal political provocation, to consider in this debate issues which have nothing to do with the European Parliament and the European institutions.
Moving on now to the Dimitrakopoulos-Leinen report, I must say firstly that I have the greatest respect for the work carried out by the two rapporteurs. This is a report of great depth and vision but, conceivably, it might not be the subject of consensus in Council, which would allow it to represent a step forward in the enlargement of the Union. However, I must repeat that I have great respect for the work carried out as it provides a certain vision of Europe and of what European ambition must be. I wonder, like everyone else – and we will probably have the opportunity to consider this in more detail during the debate within the IGC – whether the conditions exist within this framework to achieve the ambition expressed in this report, particularly by the deadline. I wonder whether we can close an IGC such as we all want, by the end of this year, with such a high level of ambition in terms of reform.
This point is very important. This House must also consider, in voting on this report, whether or not the set of proposals which it contains is sufficiently realistic about what can be approved by the end of this Conference. This is regardless of the excellent quality of the proposals, as I have said, and the vision of the future which they provide. We must realise that the European Union, being governed as it is by rules of efficiency, democracy and transparency, must always consider, as stated by Mr Poos, the problem of whether public opinion will systematically accept all the reforms to be made. There are fifteen parliaments to which we must answer and which must ratify this Conference. If one of these fifteen does not ratify the IGC, then we will be faced with a European crisis. I hope that the people will realise that the work we are doing in the IGC is serious, realistic and responsible. We do not want this to become a fatuous exercise which may tomorrow have a negative effect on the whole reason for its existence, namely the expectation that the EU will modernise and reform in order to make it compatible with the future enlargement which may know no bounds."@en1
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