Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-14-Speech-2-020"
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"en.20001114.2.2-020"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I believe this Charter is nothing more than the umpteenth example of the ability of the European Union and its Member States to proliferate empty texts and declarations of intent.
This Charter, as you know, has no legal basis, nor does it provide for any body capable of enforcing compliance with the rights and principles it proclaims. This Charter is just another empty text, and the appeals from Mr Barón Crespo and others to include a reference to the Charter in Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty are not going to change a thing. We are aware, in the Austrian case, for example, that Europe went outside the scope of the Treaty in responding with bilateral measures, and it was not empowered, there being no authorisation under Articles 6 and 7, to ensure respect for the fine principles to which it claims to adhere.
The issue is more important than that. The Cologne Council had the bright idea of thinking up a bone to keep the dog busy, the dog in question being the European Parliament, and so it invented this Charter, and Parliament, as it is increasingly accustomed to doing, threw itself upon the proffered bone and gave it a good chew, to such an extent that we are, today, completely under the illusion that we are taking part in some historic event. Yet the real issues before us are the blank pages of the French Presidency’s executive summary, the issue of the Commission and the issue of the weighting of votes within the Council, and Parliament, which has always adopted a strong line with the weak and a weak attitude towards the strong and which is going increasingly downhill in its way of approaching matters, can find nothing to say about this planned destruction of the Commission. It is going along with this sideways shift which is turning the executive Commission into a sub-council, an underling of a Council which is and will be stronger yet.
What is actually on the agenda of the Nice Summit is the slide towards intergovernmentalism firmly anchored in the texts. You can accept the situation, you can let off steam by producing great empty texts, but that is the reality of the situation and it is distressing to note that the small countries of the European Union, in persisting in wanting one Commissioner per Member State, are supporting the plan of undermining the Commission.
We are currently conspiring to kill off the Commission, a murder with a willing victim, since the Commission fell in with the Council’s proposals last week. So let us either lament or pretend to rejoice, let us celebrate this great event which is actually just a perfectly empty great event. I think we ought to remind ourselves of that.
Whether we vote for this Charter, against it, or abstain altogether, nothing will change."@en1
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