Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-29-Speech-3-039"
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"en.20001129.7.3-039"2
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"Madam President, Minister, ladies and gentlemen, next week the European Council meets in Nice. This summit gives the Heads of State and Government an historic opportunity that they cannot afford to miss. It will, indeed, provide the opportunity to address a range of issues: to focus on the road map for enlargement, to consolidate the Lisbon process and a social agenda and to proclaim the Charter of Fundamental Rights. These are all important issues, but today, at your suggestion, I want to focus on the important decisions to be taken in Nice.
Member States naturally find it politically difficult to give up the right of veto in sensitive areas such as social policy, asylum and immigration, common trade policy, cohesion and taxation, even when this relates only to the technical changes necessary to make the single market work. However, if everybody sticks to their position, we will all be worse off. Indeed, mathematics and 50 years of experience show beyond a doubt that even modest enlargements make it far more difficult to reach unanimous agreements. In a Union of 27 or more Member States, the unanimity requirement will, quite simply, paralyse progress in every area where it is maintained.
Mark my words: if the Member States' veto on justice and home affairs is maintained, we shall be severely delayed in implementing the programme agreed at Tampere or even unable to do so. And I shall say so loud and clear to the Heads of States and Government at Nice. They must be under no illusions about this.
The particularly sensitive areas I have been talking about include trade policy. This is a subject I would like to dwell on for a moment, because the House made a point of highlighting it on today's agenda.
As you know, modern economic activity revolves around services. Under the present rules, certain aspects of negotiations on services are covered by the unanimity requirement, precisely because our Treaties were originally commercial treaties governing goods and not services. The problem currently plaguing our trade policy is that, because negotiations cover a wide range of sectors, including services, any progress whatsoever in goods as well as service sectors is almost inevitably held up by unanimity voting.
Our trading partners or, in some cases, we could say our adversaries, are delighted because they can count on 15 potential vetos, and, with enlargement, there will soon be many more. The situation is then made even worse on those occasions when one of the Member States places conditions, sometimes financial conditions, on its assent. The simple and natural solution – and this has, in fact, been a majority view during the Conference – would be to change the present rules so that qualified majority voting applies to all aspects of such negotiations, including services. Regrettably, the Conference's existing text is very complicated, very ambiguous and very long with its two Protocols, and yet, despite its length and complexity, it is also very weak. It does not provide the simple answer we need to the simple problem we have been facing for so long.
Much remains to be done if we are to find a suitable solution. For us, the final outcome of Nice will depend largely on the conclusions reached by qualified majority voting. I am committed to doing whatever it takes to reach an agreement that provides added value.
Inevitably, the question we shall be asked the next morning is: "Are you satisfied with the outcome?" The Commission will answer that question frankly and directly. At the next plenary session in Strasbourg, I shall tell this House whether, in my view, the enlarged Union we are all determined to achieve will be able to act effectively or not. When all is said and done, that is the criterion by which Nice must be judged.
Important decisions will be taken in Nice to ensure that the European Union is able to assume its own responsibilities in the world. The prevention of conflict and crisis management are traditional areas of Community activity. It is our task to fulfil our commitments against the backdrop of new ambitious objectives which the Union has set itself. This means that the Union must develop an autonomous capacity to take decisions and, where NATO itself is not involved, to launch and conduct military operations under Union command in response to international crises. In this connection, it will be particularly useful to develop fruitful cooperation between the European Union, the United Nations, the OSCE and the Council of Europe. I would stress that this in no way detracts from the fact that, for the Member States concerned, NATO remains the basis of the collective defence of its members and will continue to play an important role in crisis management.
As we saw in Kosovo, crisis management is not just about imposing a cease-fire. It is also about keeping warring factions apart, rescuing and evacuating European Union citizens, caring for large numbers of refugees, supplying food and medicine, imposing and maintaining law and order, restoring calm after chaos.
There are several aspects to this debate, and I will touch briefly on three of them: firstly, the need to close the Intergovernmental Conference by adopting a treaty that has genuine added value; secondly, our security policy on crisis management; and finally, the need to mark out the way beyond Nice.
However, crises do not usually erupt overnight. They are the culmination of a process of rising tension in a country or region. Therefore, one of the key aims of our common foreign and security policy must be to defuse tension and prevent it form turning into armed conflict. The Community already has many tools for this job. We have had them for a long time. For example, almost all our external aid programmes are geared to supporting democracy and stability. What we have to do is coordinate them better and make them more effective, and that is why the Commission is in the process of adopting the necessary internal measures.
The Commission is convinced that only an integrated approach to crises can guarantee the consistency and efficiency necessary for the Union to be able to play its full role on the international scene. Crisis management requires the Community to show an increased capacity to react, but this must be translated into action in a way that fully respects our institutional framework as established by the Treaties. We will, of course, need to cooperate with the other institutions and with the High Representative for the CFSP. In any case, we will have to make decisions about this framework now, because a crisis is the worst possible moment to set attributions and responsibilities.
The discussion which took place within the Conference itself demonstrated that there were issues that were ripe for debate after Nice: the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the Community legal system, as Mr Védrine said; the reorganisation of the Treaties on the basis of existing texts to present the aims and working methods of the Union to the public in a clearer way; making a clear distinction between the competences of the Union and the competences of the Member States; and last, but by no means least, if I am not mistaken about the tone of the debate and about the outlook for Europe's future, the issue of what the balance between the European Union's institutions should look like in the future, in the spirit of an institutional model, the Community model, which has stood the test of time.
We will undoubtedly have much to do after Nice, but that we will have to leave until later. For now, let us look to the immediate future under the French Presidency and focus on the priority of bringing Nice to a conclusion and paving the way to enlargement.
First, then, a new treaty. The primary purpose of a new treaty is to ensure that the Union will continue to be able to function after enlargement. Our institutions, originally designed for six Member States, will soon have to manage a Union nearly five times that size. We must be ready for this dramatic enlargement. Any left-overs from Nice would hamper our progress. We require the candidate countries to meet all the criteria before accession: we too must live up to our obligations. This means ensuring that the Union can take effective and democratic decisions which fulfil the expectations of Europe's citizens.
Throughout last winter, the Commission devoted a lot of energy to explaining why and on what specific issues the initial agenda of the IGC was to be extended. In particular, in our written opinion at the end of January, we established the minimum degree of ambition necessary to secure a successful outcome for the Conference.
I am now pleased to say that the negotiators are close to an agreement on the provisions governing, for example, closer cooperation, the Court of Justice, the democratic values of Article 7 and deepening the involvement of European political parties in the democratic life of our Member States and institutions. I sense that we are approaching a reasonable compromise on the composition of the Commission and the weighting of votes in the Council. Provided that a number of basic principles are respected, I believe that the Conference can go ahead and reach an agreement on those issues that satisfies the expectations and needs of both large and small countries.
Whatever the number of Commissioners, the important thing is to give the President of the Commission all the powers needed to run the College effectively. Similarly, any change in the weighting of votes in the Council must also guarantee that decisions cannot be taken against the will of the majority of Member States. And the simplest and best way to do so is through a double majority system, even if we are aware of the difficulties this will entail.
So we are slowly moving in the right direction. However, there is one issue on which our lack of progress causes me great concern, and in the view of both our institutions, it is the single most important issue facing us as we prepare for enlargement. It is the issue of qualified majority voting. If the Union is to be effective, the Conference must make substantial progress on this, and that also means extending the codecision procedure."@en1
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