Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-29-Speech-3-076"
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"en.20001129.7.3-076"2
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"Mr President, I wish firstly to thank the Members of the European Parliament for a very high standard of debate. A truly important and truly difficult European Council is coming up, and at such times a kind of tension can be felt generally. Sometimes it can even be discerned in certain newspaper articles and it comes as no surprise to experienced Europeans. This debate has been of a very high quality, very concise and very useful. It was also what I really came here to listen to. I shall take as much account of it as I can. I definitely intend to pass on the information to the President of the Republic, who will be chairing the Nice European Council, the Prime Minister, and my colleagues on the General Affairs Council next Monday. So in that respect it has been very useful.
As regards what has been said on qualified majority voting, Mr Poettering will forgive me, but I thought it was a little bit facile to name just one country and act as if that country’s shift in its position relating to its own problems was sufficient to bring about a large shift in the others. That is exactly what we did as regards the Commission. In developing the idea that it would be advantageous in the future to have a Commission that was not too large to be effective and retained its full capabilities, especially its power of initiative, we demonstrated that we too were ready to make that sacrifice. Equal rotation affects big countries too, as actually at any given time they might not have a commissioner, just like everyone else. There is no discrimination.
That shift in position did not spread. It did not prompt sacrifice by others. The same applies to qualified majority voting issues. At present twelve of the fifteen countries think there are issues where they cannot move to qualified majority voting, not now. They accept it in principle, they accept it for the long term, but they have legitimate democratic interests to defend, and in their view the right conditions are not yet in place. That is the situation the Presidency has to recognise. There is no link between the positions of the various parties. If one country has an internal problem, that does not make another country’s internal problem disappear. We have recognised that difficulty, regardless of our ambitions, and as a Presidency we have returned to it many times, at many meetings – we will return to it again at Sunday’s conclave – but I am here to tell you what the situation is. I cannot tell you exactly what you want to hear. I have to tell it like it is.
We have done a great deal of work, but we have run up against the same old problem and I do not think a shift in a single country can start the ball rolling, because yet again we are faced with very tough national, political and democratic situations in twelve of the fifteen countries. Of course, we must try to make progress, because this is not satisfactory. It is not enough and between now and Nice we will make further efforts to identify what room there is for manoeuvre. All the same I wanted to make that point.
I do not want to take up too much time. This has been a very interesting debate, but it has been a long one. We have another interesting debate ahead of us. I would simply appeal to you not to make a premature scapegoat of the Presidency-in-Office. There is no justification for that when the Council has not even taken place yet, and disappointment itself is premature because it is too early to come to any conclusions. I understand all about the waiting, the impatience, the hopes and ambitions. I understand all that, I am listening, I am taking account of it and I will try to ensure that we bear it in mind and apply it to the political decisions we face in the course of the difficult negotiations in Nice.
It is not the French Presidency that is going to succeed or fail in Nice. There is nothing in the Treaties to say that the Presidency-in-Office can annexe the prerogatives and responsibilities of the other Member States, or the Commission, or Parliament, or anyone else. At Nice it is the Fifteen who must take responsibility. The Fifteen decided to start accession negotiations with twelve countries that want to move forward and want a more effective, stronger Europe at all levels. It is the Fifteen all together who will or will not find the clear, transparent and democratic answer to today’s problems. I am sure the Fifteen will find a solution to many of the problems you have raised with the Presidency.
Thank you again and I know we can find the solution together. I think Parliament will be able to witness the establishment of the improved institutional mechanisms needed to handle the future development of the European Union which unites us all.
Despite that, although this exercise is also very useful because it raises many relevant questions and suggestions, I have to say that I found the overall tone excessively negative. I do not think the general tone of the speeches, while they were incredibly varied and rich in detail, genuinely reflects what Europe is really like today. Europe is in fact making progress, considerable progress. Of course I hear your concerns and respect them, but they do seem to some extent to be at odds with that considerable progress. To take the example of the agreement which has just been reached on fiscal harmonisation, and it was unanimous, that is an agreement we have been trying to get for years. I think it was first mentioned in 1989 actually. So – as one of you said, referring to American optimism and the way Americans talk about themselves – we should also be capable of valuing what is working well and what is making progress.
As regards method, I honestly do not see what else the country holding the Presidency can do. Holding it does not give us any extra power or allow us to act in the place of the others. It brings responsibilities which we shoulder as best we can. I do not see what method could be adopted to deal with issues as complex as institutional affairs, other than taking the problems one by one, seeing what everyone’s position is, trying to identify what room there is to manoeuvre, asking everyone how flexible they can be, and making proposals which take account of that.
All that can be done, but if the Presidency feels that its approach and ambitions are being blocked, it cannot disregard the positions of the Member States. That would not be democratic. Take the Charter – you are fully aware how active the French Presidency has been on that subject. Well, several Member States were against the very existence of the Charter if it were to have legal force and that had to be recognised. Some Member States were even against mentioning social affairs or new rights. So we had to move on, we had to compromise, remembering that Europe’s history is littered with political texts that have had major impact on political ideas, thought and progress, in some cases even when they do not have, or do not yet have, legal force. This is a perfect example of constructive compromise.
Once we had reached agreement on a text – and this is a good text, very well drafted by the Convention, it reads well, it has style – some countries then said we must incorporate it into Article 6. As a country we support that view, but what do we do as a Presidency? We proposed that during the discussions and several countries opposed it, threatening to withdraw their agreement to the very principle of the Charter if we insisted on Article 6. So it is not at all a case of not proclaiming it, and it is not a problem of transparency. Everything that is going on is totally transparent. Nothing is being concealed. Everything is being widely debated. You know everything about everything, but some countries only agreed to the text of the Charter on condition that it remains purely political.
What can the Presidency do? The countries making this an absolute condition cannot be excluded from the discussion. The Presidency must be democratic. You are always talking about democracy, but you have no monopoly on it. There is democracy in the General Affairs Council too, and in the European Council, at all the meetings, in all the debates. We have to take it into account. That is not a lack of ambition, in fact it is precisely because we have been very ambitious that we have been faced with strong resistance throughout this whole affair. It shows considerable ambition to tackle institutional reform. That strong resistance would not exist without strong ambitions. It is all related.
We are doing our best, if I may say so. Consequently, I doubt if there is any other way of making progress apart from clarifying the position of each country on each issue and coming to the European Council with the most honest possible presentation of them, after trying to get them to shift of course.
I would also say that I do not think there is a problem between ‘larger and ‘smaller’ countries. I use those terms for convenience, but I never normally use them. I do not regard any country that belongs to the European Union as a small country, whatever its size, because its membership means that it too has influence over all the great issues, so the classic distinction is no longer entirely relevant today. The sense in which the press uses the terms is quite clear.
In the matter of the Intergovernmental Conference, the only issue where people said there was a disagreement between larger and smaller countries lay with the Commission. That is inaccurate too, because the proposals made were not proposals by the larger countries to penalise the smaller ones. There was an appeal for everyone to make sacrifices, small, medium-sized and large countries. That was the starting point for the theory that there was a confrontation between the larger and smaller countries. That is groundless; that is wrong. It is not true on any of the three other important issues at the IGC and it is not true on any of the other issues at the Nice European Council. So that picture is inaccurate, and I think the sensible thing is to put it behind us."@en1
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