Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-161"
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"en.20001025.6.3-161"2
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". – There has been much debate within the European Union in recent times concerning what is known as the principle of enhanced cooperation. In its simplest terms, what this means is that larger Member States can integrate more closely and over a shorter time-frame than smaller Member States of the EU.
In essence, the proponents of such a policy want to put in place a two-tier Europe. They want the European Union to be built at two different paces: one for countries that wish to integrate more closely and one for countries that want to tread more carefully on the issue of economic integration.
I do not think it will be a necessarily healthy move forward for the European Union if EU leaders were to accept and implement the principle of enhanced cooperation to its fullest. I believe that this would fly in the face of both the founding objectives and spirit of the Treaty of Rome and of all subsequent Treaties thereafter.
One should recall that the Single European Act in 1987 laid the groundwork for the implementation of an internal market. Large scale EU Structural Funds were put aside to help Objective 1 countries within the European Union so as to guarantee that these countries could become more competitive over time. EU leaders stated that they did not want an internal market of only a few countries. They wanted all participating countries within the European Union to actively engage in a competitive manner within the environment of a new single market.
That is why the large allocation of EU Structural Funds was made. The operating structures of the internal market have been a success ever since the early 1990s. This principle of equality between poorer and richer nations was transcended into policies that were implemented to put in place a new European single currency regime. Once again, if poorer and smaller countries of the European Union could not reform their economic structures they would not be able to meet the economic convergence criterion as laid down in the Maastricht Treaty.
EU leaders financed large-scale EU Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund programmes for smaller and poorer countries so that as many countries as possible could participate in the European single currency structure.
There is a need for institutional equality in the context of the negotiations on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference. The influence of smaller Member States cannot be dissipated by a set of larger countries within the EU that seek to implement, as I have said, the principle of enhanced cooperation. This would not be healthy for the European Union now and into the future. It certainly would not be healthy in the context of the impending enlargement of the European Union itself."@en1
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