Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-047"
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"Mr President, I am sure that the informal Summit of Biarritz will not yield any breakthroughs at this stage. We are counting on Nice to fulfil this requirement. However, what the summit
do is to prepare the groundwork for Nice, and this is why this debate is certainly useful to get across our parliamentary message.
With regard to Biarritz, I desperately hope that the Amsterdam leftovers can be resolved very quickly. Concerning the number of Commissioners, we believe that one Commissioner for each Member State is enough, and Parliament needs no more than 700 MEPs. Furthermore, and this brings me to the most important point, all EU legislation must be subject to qualified majority decision-making combined with – and this is a compelling point – Parliament’s right of codecision, because I have heard rumours here and there that these two do not automatically coincide.
What I would also call for, however, is to look beyond immediate concerns in Biarritz. We know all too well that the present Treaties are inadequate and that the Union will need a better and different structure in future, a more constitutional structure which clearly distinguishes the powers of the Member States and those of the Union. In this respect, President Prodi set the right tone in my opinion.
I would like to make a brief comment on the Charter. I had the honour of being involved in the preparatory work for the Charter. I would first of all like to thank Mr Roman Herzog and Mr Inigo Méndez de Vigo for their sterling work and for the way compromises were struck time and again. I would also like to commend the role of Commissioner Vitorino. The outcome was sound. The Charter provides for the dignity of the citizens, the ban on capital punishment, the citizens’ liberties, education, labour and enterprise in all Member States, the very exhaustive anti-discrimination article, which is even more exhaustive than the one in the Treaty of Amsterdam, and the equal treatment of men and women; not only in traditional areas of work, remuneration and social security, but also in all areas of the Union. All this represents a step forward.
I hope with all my heart, and I must say this quite emphatically, that an opportunity will arise when this document can be incorporated into the Treaties at some point in the future.
Mr President, I would like to end by making a final remark on Professor Prodi’s cry from the heart. I have to say that his warning, a well-meaning one at that, to stop confirming and developing intergovernmental trends, has really struck a chord with me. These only exacerbate the EU’s anti-democratic disposition. Mr Prodi has put an emphatic stop to this kind of action, which has hopefully resonated with Mr Moscovici, and I truly hope that this trend can be broken and reversed at the Councils in Nice and Biarritz."@en1
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