Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-12-Speech-2-056"
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"en.20001212.4.2-056"2
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"Madam President, Mr President, the Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities regrets the fact that the Presidency has not followed up the message that was sent to it in July. At Nice, it simply boosted the power of the technocrats.
The crisis within the Commission has not led to any reform of its role or of the way in which it functions. All that has been proposed to us is an increase of its President’s powers and I doubt that even this would have prevented the dysfunction demonstrated by the Santer Commission. The negotiations of the last few days have proved that it was nothing but a laughable process of haggling. People are fighting over power of influence and postponing the distribution of competences and the clarification of the European Union’s objectives until 2004, even though making everything uniform is still clearly the order of the day.
We are told of parity between the larger States but the division is confirmed with 27 additional seats being allocated to just one country. Enough hypocrisy! The right of each Member State to be heard within the Council should have been recognised in Nice. For this to happen, one vote is enough and would enable us to avoid the countless calculations of weighting imposed by qualified majority voting. Taking into account these interests and differences within the Council would have avoided the debates on the number of Commissioners to which each State is clinging.
When I hear a Commissioner calling for an end to the cultural exception and for the extension of qualified majority voting to Article 133 in international negotiations, I must state that, personally, the loss of one Commissioner would not be particularly serious.
This House ought to represent the expression of an elected majority that backs the decisions of ministers who, I would remind you, are answerable to their respective national parliamentary representations. You chose to follow another path. We find this truly deplorable and it will benefit neither Europe itself nor any Member State.
With regard to the Summit’s conclusions, I am stunned to see the discrepancy between the proclamations on the services of general interest and the dismantling of the postal service, which is on the agenda for this part-session. My fear is that the objective of full employment, which is part of the Social Agenda, may suffer the same fate.
As far as Europe’s image is concerned, this Presidency has been a failure. The common interest appears to diminish the signing of a treaty that is designed to provide solutions by transferring ever more sovereignty against the wishes expressed by the public. Furthermore, we could adopt the formula suggested by the Economic and Social Council and say that Europe is experiencing a serious lack of public debate. Sometimes out of convenience or as a matter of urgency, the issue is dodged or cut short and sometimes a debate does take place but the experts and the elites are often the only players that are heard, that are listened to and who really influence decision-making. The danger of this is that the public will feel alienated from the decisions that actually concern them directly.
My group is disappointed by this Treaty and is worried about the future that it holds for us and we will therefore use all our power to oppose it."@en1
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