Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-055"
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Mr President, before I in turn discuss the two excellent reports presented by Mr Gil–Robles and Mr Duhamel on behalf of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which both have an institutional or constitutional dimension, allow me to begin this speech by responding to Mr Segni who brought up the status of the islands.
I am therefore prepared to support the request in José Maria GilRobles’ report aiming to enhance Parliament’s role and I support the idea, at least, of replacing the consultation of the European Parliament in the first pillar with its assent. However, in our opinion, the roles currently envisaged by the presidency in its very latest proposals regarding the procedure for i.e. the CFSP, are still inadequate as they stand. That is why, yesterday, when we were discussing various points, I put forward a number of amendments which will usefully serve to specify or enhance the role of our institutions and the place allotted to them according to the pillars, in the context of implementation of reinforced cooperation. We must ensure that the required coherence between actions under the three pillars is also strengthened, a task that will fall primarily to the Community institutions.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, reinforced cooperation cannot, and must never allow the
to be unravelled in any way. I would remind you that the procedure can be simple, with a qualified majority and the withdrawal of the veto, because we want to maintain strict conditions. Strict conditions, moreover, such as those laid down in the Treaty of Amsterdam, which we think must be maintained, may justify or allow for simple procedures. I completely share Parliament’s wish for the fundamental principles to remain unchanged, but I have noticed, Mr Gil–Robles, a willingness on your part to make some of these conditions more flexible, as in point 11 of your resolution, and I would like to exercise a certain amount of caution in this respect.
Finally, we all agree that reinforced cooperation should not – I have said this before and I will say it again – become a characteristic feature of the European Union. It must remain a mechanism that the Member States may use only when all the other possibilities for progress on the road to integration involving all Members have been ruled out or are not feasible. Reinforced cooperation must not, therefore, become the universal cure-all in order to conceal our weaknesses. To be more specific, I think that reinforced cooperation cannot be designed as an alternative to qualified majority voting, which remains and will always remain, in the view of the Commission, the main subject under negotiation.
That concludes my comments on the report presented by Mr Gil–Robles. As a final comment, and this refers to the report presented with great passion by Olivier Duhamel too, I should like to say that the report on reinforced cooperation and Mr Duhamel’s report are both equal to the reputation of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs. I would therefore like to congratulate the members and the chair of the committee, Mr Napolitano.
Moving on to the second report, which we welcome most warmly, Mr Duhamel. We think your report provides an excellent starting point for the discussion of the constitutional work that we are to begin immediately after Nice. Despite this remark, let me say from the outset that our duty, here and now, for the Intergovernmental Conference to succeed, is to concentrate all our energy and all our efforts on the IGC agenda as it stands, in particular when extended to reinforced cooperation. We needs must do this because we are a long way short of the target.
Mr Duhamel, you will undoubtedly agree with me that if Nice is not successful, there will be no room, or at least no credibility, for consideration of the future of European integration, at least within the current framework. We must therefore succeed in Nice, and open the doors to enlargement and to new and future reforms. First of all, however, the objective of these negotiations is to get the door open. Yet, inevitably, certain questions are now being asked, so forcefully by yourself, for instance, and must be asked in Nice, even if they are not the subject under debate at the Intergovernmental Conference.
I think that Nice could be the beginning of the next stages of discussions on several related topics. First, the reorganisation of the Treaties. I thank you for the positive reference you made to the study by the European Institute in Florence that we commissioned, and I also noted Mr Moscovici’s constructive approach in this respect. I must, however, remind you that we had commissioned a report on the basis of the existing legislation and this is what we were given, but naturally, as soon as the contents of several hundred articles and several Treaties are assembled into 93 articles, since it is possible to work on the basis of the existing law – as, I think, the Florence Institute did – the legal interpretation of this new text is bound to be different. This is a good piece of work that constitutes a basis available for the future exercise of reorganising the treaties. That is the first point.
The second point is the legal nature of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a matter which, as the Presidency said, may well not be answered in Nice. But, like many of you, we think that this work cannot be left at that and we must, perhaps in Article 6, give this Charter legal force. In any case, I will fight for that. My third point, finally, is the possible clarification of the definition of competences within the European Union.
I know that Olivier Duhamel’s report essentially slots into a wider perspective: that of a constitutionalisation that would go way beyond the current institutional framework and which would only be completed in the long term. It seems to me, however, that we need to clarify the current legal and institutional situation first of all, which is what your report also proposes as a first stage: “a reorganised Treaty”, as you say in point 9 of your resolution. Like you, Mr Duhamel, I think the European Union should be equipped with a clear, simpler fundamental text. It is a necessary and feasible task. We are not talking about changing the institutional framework established by the Treaties, and certainly not about increasing the competence of the European Union, but about making European construction more user-friendly. It is essential for European democracy, our primary reason for uniting, as you reminded us, that the citizens have access to a constitutional treaty, a text which, according to the wish of Vaclav Havel, all the children of Europe can learn at school without difficulty.
The important work carried out at our request by the European Institute in Florence, to which I have referred, shows that it is legally possible to assemble all these essential elements in a single text comprising a small number of articles.
Mr Segni, as I myself returned only two days ago from an official working visit with Mr Hatzidakis to one of the larger islands of Europe, Crete, I was able to assess the sensitivity associated with the dual handicap of underdevelopment and remoteness, even without a handicap that I personally know better than most, due to my previous posts, i.e. the handicap of mountainous regions that often goes hand in hand with remoteness.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the drafting of this fundamental text could be the opportunity to provide answers to other questions of a constitutional nature which will be asked in Nice and which I mentioned just now: the legal nature of the Charter and the clarification of competences.
Is a reorganised treaty, enriched with other elements of a constitutional nature, already a constitution or must this expression be reserved, as you yourself recommend, Mr Duhamel, for a new fundamental text which would be drafted according to new methods? The word “Constitution” does not scare me, I even think I have used it in your presence, ladies and gentlemen, at the very beginning, when I was not yet an official member of the European Commission. I raised the issue of the constitutionalisation of the Treaties during my hearing before the European Parliament, prior to the investiture of the Commission. I would like to assure you of my personal availability and even my passion, Mr Duhamel, which will be at least equal to yours, in order to participate in this work. I also agree that we should move as far away as possible from the references that you yourself rejected, in the context of our work on this subject: on the left, those of Karl Marx and, on the right, as you said, those of Joseph de Maistre, even if the latter, I would like to say, while stating my disagreement with a number of his writings, at least had the merit of being from Savoy.
I would therefore like to indicate my availability and that of the Commission to work in the direction you wish, working through the process of constitutionalisation stage by stage. In any case, ladies and gentlemen, one thing is clear and must remain so: none of the questions we are discussing can constitute a condition to be achieved prior to the enlargement of the European Union towards the Mediterranean, Baltic, Eastern and Central European countries that are currently candidates.
The Commission is not in favour of calling another Intergovernmental Conference before the first round of enlargement. The reform of the institutions needed to enable this enlargement to take place must be carried out now and there must be no Nice leftovers, in any case definitely not the Amsterdam leftovers. Then there would no longer be any preliminary work at all on our part.
The conclusions of the European Council in Nice could announce, in the way you recommend, a mandate and timetable for the work on matters of a constitutional nature. Again, I think that any discussions after Nice should be open to all, to the Member States and the candidate States, in a suitable form that we shall have to define. Finally, I think that the Commission, which has participated actively in the work of the Charter and which is participating actively, as is proper, in the work of institutional negotiation, will, after Nice, also have to play its part in the collective brainstorming that is related, quite clearly, moreover, to another exercise which we have undertaken on governance.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my wish is that the Commission, in accordance with the other institutions, should mark out the route to be followed. It is ready to do so by means of a report to be drawn up following Nice on these matters of clarifying competences and simplifying the Treaties, which could be available before the end of the Treaty of Nice ratification period.
As for the continuation of the work, I will also say that the report you presented, Mr Duhamel, contains many very interesting ideas. Like you, the Commission was impressed by the quality and form of the work of the Convention which drafted the Charter of Fundamental Rights and I think that this method is one worth continuing and from which lessons can be learnt.
I would therefore like to assure Mr Segni that, like him, the Commission itself has noted certain discrepancies between the various language versions of Article 158 of the Treaty. Clearly, these linguistic differences are prejudicial to a clear interpretation of the text as, depending on which version you consult, either all or some of the islands could be concerned. However, Mr Segni, I personally do not think that there can be any ambiguity as to the content, as the text of Declaration No 30 annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam specifies that Community legislation must take account of the structural handicaps relating to islands and that specific measures in favour of such regions may be undertaken where justified.
Island status as such is not a criterion for eligibility. And that, I understand, is what you are lamenting. Disadvantaged islands are, of course, covered by cohesion policy. This is the case of many islands that I visit within the scope of Objective 1 or the cohesion appropriations, due to the very fact of their socio-economic situation and in accordance with the criteria laid down by the Structural Fund general regulation.
Mr Segni, I have decided to instigate a study on the socio-economic situation of the islands, in order to assess the situation and get as precise a diagnosis as possible of these island regions and I myself will present the results of this study, which I hope will be available during the second half of 2001. I will say in passing that these results will complement the debate that I also intend to instigate in 2001 on the cohesion report, an important public debate in which the European Parliament will take part and which will enable me to prepare the guidelines for the future regional policy for the period 2006-2013.
As for the idea you suggested of introducing this debate into the IGC, frankly, Mr Segni, it seems to me that, taking account of the scope and difficulty of the other subjects on the agenda of this Intergovernmental Conference, it would be more appropriate to rectify the text according to the procedures laid down by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, as in previous cases of clerical errors in the articles of treaties, in order to standardise the different language versions of this article quite precisely. But I understand that, behind the linguistic aspect, your question expresses another concern. With regard to this, I have told you of my intention, at least before being able to respond and if the governments agree when the time comes, to get a clearer and more objective view on the basis of the study that I am going to commission on the situation of all the islands of the various Member States of the European Union.
I would now like to discuss, in turn, the two reports presented by José María Gil–Robles and Olivier Duhamel. On the report on reinforced cooperation, I must remind you that it is not a simple matter, and Mr Gil–Robles is well aware of this as he had to fight for it. At the very beginning of the negotiations, this issue was not on the agenda. We all fought, and I thank the Portuguese and French Presidencies for coming to realise that we had to add this issue of reinforced cooperation to the notorious three leftovers from Amsterdam. Thus, on content and form, I am pleased to see, that the positions of the European Commission and the European Parliament are very close.
After this IGC, Mr Gil–Robles, I think the instrument of reinforced cooperation will be more clearly defined and, if I may use this expression, more ‘workable’ in relation to the current content of the Treaty of Amsterdam. For the Commission, there are five essential components of reinforced cooperation. It must take place, as you said yourself, within the institutional framework, with a suitable role for each institution: that is the first point. It must remain open to all and, as I said earlier, it must be an instrument of association, integration, and definitely not an instrument of exclusion: that is the second point. It requires strict conditions, but also practicable conditions: that is the third point. Guarantees are needed for those not, or not yet, participating in reinforced cooperation: that is the fourth point. Finally, the fifth point: reinforced cooperation must not be seen, as is sometimes the case, as a way of concealing or hiding a lack of agreement on qualified majority. As far as I can see, these two issues, although they are sometimes related, basically have nothing to do with each other. I think that the report presented to you today, ladies and gentlemen, echoes these five features.
It is important to ensure that this reinforced cooperation remains within the framework of the European Union and respects the roles of the institutions, in particular the Commission and the European Parliament. Furthermore, Mr Gil–Robles, most of the delegations to the negotiations in which I am participating agree that the future treaty should recognise an enhanced role for the Commission and the Parliament in implementing reinforced cooperation. We now need to work together to ensure that this intention or direction actually becomes reality."@en1
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