Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-29-Speech-3-040"
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"en.20001129.7.3-040"2
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"Madam President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, may I say to the President of the Council that his country is confronted by a Herculean task, both as the EU presidency and as the French Republic. It has been stressed on several occasions – and I can endorse everything that President Prodi has said – that a formidable challenge awaits you on the issue of majority voting. If the reports are correct, France is the country that is still hesitant about a switch to majority voting on matters relating to trade in services.
We truly desire a result in Nice, but it must be a result that sets out ambitious aims, and my wish for you is that we achieve such a result, that we set an agenda which transcends Nice and focuses on issues such as the basic governmental structure of Europe and the division of powers, in other words what the responsibilities of the Union are and what are matters for the individual nation states. This is something else that we need for the future.
One last remark, which I make with absolutely no polemical undertone, is that in Strasbourg in January 1995 I heard François Mitterrand speaking. As we all know, he belonged to your family of political parties, and when I follow some of the party congresses in your country, I often wish that the European enthusiasm of François Mitterrand could be found in his successors. I wish you some of that enthusiasm, so that we can obtain a good result in Nice, a good result for all of us and for Europe.
Mr President of the Council, how can you expect Germany to give ground on asylum and immigration policies? How can you expect Spain to give ground on the cohesion issue? How can you expect Austria to give ground on transport policy? How do you expect the United Kingdom to give ground on fiscal policy, when the presidency, the French Republic, is not budging? I urge you to move forward, so that you can encourage others to follow suit.
If an acceptable outcome is not achieved on these issues, we shall not hesitate to specify exactly where the responsibility lies in the wake of the Nice summit. We also believe that, with regard to issues on which we fail to agree to majority decision-making at this stage, you could lay down in the Treaty that the switch to majority voting may be made by a unanimous decision of the Council, for if it is enshrined in the Treaties in that way, there will be no need to revise the Treaties and engage in a lengthy ratification process for each and every extension of majority voting.
You spoke of codecision by the European Parliament. I welcome that on all issues which are subject to majority voting. But this means that the right of codecision must also apply to fundamental matters of European agricultural policy, where majority decision-making already exists. On the reweighting of voting rights in the Council of Ministers, I emphatically endorse what Mr Prodi, the President of the Commission, has said about the double majority being a democratic system, and it really ought to be an acceptable option for the French Republic to operate in this way in its relations with another Member State in a particular coordination process. So we do need a reweighting of voting rights with a view to ensuring that a majority of states which are home to a minority of the European population cannot ultimately make the rules; the unequivocal democratic principle must certainly prevail here.
And now to the Commission. We have been astonished to see the way in which the large countries have practised a policy of arrogance in recent months – and the term is not my own but has been used quite frequently by members of my group from smaller countries. The large nations have seen fit to exert pressure on the smaller ones so that the latter will agree to give up their permanent representation on the Commission. May I say to the President of the Council that it is certainly possible to discuss rotating membership of the Commission, but the small Member States' permanent seat on the Commission will only become negotiable once the office of President of the Commission has been strengthened, once he has been given the right to dismiss a Member of the Commission, for example. What we need now in the first instance is for the Commission to be strengthened as an organ of the Community; if you do that and furnish proof that we are not regressing into mere intergovernmental cooperation, if you strengthen the Commission, we can then start thinking one day about how to create a new system of representation. But we must heed this warning: respect the dignity of the small countries, because the small countries have always borne the brunt of disputes between major powers throughout the history of our continent; for that reason, we must uphold the dignity of Europe's small countries.
As far as enhanced cooperation is concerned, I agree with what you have said. We are pleased that the secretariats are no longer on the agenda, and even our British friends, who normally adopt quite different positions to the majority of our group on questions of institutional development – while still remaining good friends – fully subscribe to our view that these secretariats must not be created but that all cooperation between Member States must be conducted within the framework of Community procedures. The Commission must be involved, Parliament must have a say, and nobody may be excluded.
Finally, let me deal with the question of the Charter. The majority of our group take the view that the Charter should not only be ceremonially proclaimed but should also become European law. I know and regret that this will not be achieved in Nice. Further steps, however, will have to follow. We shall arrive at a result in Nice, Mr President of the Council, but let me say categorically that, if we only obtain a minimal result, the words of President Jacques Chirac will be fulfilled and we shall have no treaty. If the result is a poor treaty, a rather unambitious, minimalist treaty that does not lay sound foundations for enlargement of the European Union, the failure of Nice should be admitted and the baton handed over to the Swedes and later to the Belgians so that we can then achieve a result which, if all goes well, will be a good basis for enlargement."@en1
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