Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-04-Speech-2-083"
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"en.20000704.3.2-083"2
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"Mr President, Minister, let me share a few comments with you in the intimate surroundings of the end of the day's sitting. Apparently, Europe is some sort of vamp provoking everyone into political promiscuity. I do not know, after listening to President Chirac’s comments, what political party he is going to wind up in at the end of his career, but the transformation is extraordinary, and it is true that we have taken twenty-one years to persuade President Chirac that Europe is something other than that which he believed when he made his Cochin address in 1978. I should like to say that I am still convinced that we are not going to have to work so hard over such a long period to persuade Prime Minister Jospin to at last grasp the European cause firmly.
He is not always against it and it is safe to make minor observations like that without getting irritated!
I simply meant that I am convinced that it is no longer enough today to repeat things endlessly: President Chirac said many things that I agree with. Ambitious, yes, it is ambitious, but let us see tangible proof of this ambition!
I am sorry, for example, that he did not repeat what he said in Berlin regarding the agenda for a constitution. In Berlin, he said we should have enlargement plus constitution at the same time. I would have liked him to say the same thing before this House: enlargement plus constitution, at the same time, so that we might have a constitution by 2003 or 2004 or 2005 as well as enlargement.
Secondly, speaking of a constitution, we must be careful not to be too naive. Who does what? It sounds good but what does it actually mean? For Europe means shared authority, and increasingly shared authority: in other words, the constitution ought to tell us who does what, and how, together. That is precisely the problem! If it were quite as simple to perform political surgery, we would make faster progress.
And then I must say that, as Paul Lannoye said, I am saddened when I hear people discussing foreign policy and sparing no expense on arms and defence without even mentioning conflict prevention. Europe’s role is also to invent an alternative foreign policy based specifically on preventing conflicts, on the need for ever fewer arms. I am not saying that we do not need arms, I am not so naive, but I do not want European foreign policy to be exemplified merely by top fighter planes and soldiers obliged to go to Bosnia or Kosovo, but instead by our ability to prevent a conflict arising in Bosnia or Kosovo.
From this point of view, I would say that President Chirac is going in the right direction and I think that Prime Minister Jospin would be able to catch up with him if he were more clearly and resolutely pro-European."@en1
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