Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-193"
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"en.20010117.6.3-193"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, President of the Commission, I would like to thank you for attending and for your substantial speech. If you will allow me, I would like to ask you a brief question on an urgent matter. In a few days’ time, the Union is due to make a statement on Afghanistan. It will have to adopt a common position. in recent weeks, the Security Council imposed an embargo on just the Talibans. Mr President, I would like to know if the European Union will also adopt this position.
As to the future of the European Union, we have given ourselves over to a certain amount of posturing, trying to make an impact. Some forecast that we will vote against the Treaty of Nice, a perfectly legitimate action, I feel. There has been no response on democracy, no response on the rule of law; the programmed destruction of the Commission was consummated in Nice. Many members and, I hope, the majority, will legitimately come out against this Treaty.
Having said that, we are used to a great deal of flexing of muscles in the House and we will have to see what will happen when Parliament enters the ring to vote. Mr President-in-Office, I am not sure if you should be too concerned, since the past has many things to teach us. I am not, of course, Mr President, asking you to make a statement against the Treaty of Nice, I am merely asking for your understanding. At the signing of the Treaty of Cologne, the Council, of which you were a member, threw Parliament a bone in the shape of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in order to keep it quiet. A little too late, Parliament realised that this was indeed its intention and, this is the important point, that this was what you decided at Nice in the way you decided it, in other words, the weighting of votes in the Council and the membership of the Commission.
Having said that, at Nice, it was no bone that was tossed to Parliament, Mr President-in-Office, but a poisoned chalice. Suggesting an Intergovernmental Conference in 2004 to Parliament and the Commission is like offering a poisoned chalice because there will be no Parliament in 2004. We will be busy with the pre-election campaign for the preliminaries in January and February 2004 and then with the election campaign proper in March, April and May. The elections will be held in June, then we will have a well-earned rest in July and August. There will be the low-level preparatory meetings in September, the great budget issue in October and November and finally the Intergovernmental Conference in December. Mr President, from now on, if you could show a little understanding and ask your colleagues in the Council either to bring forward this conference to 2003 or to postpone it until 2005, you may be able to salvage the honour of Parliament, which very often does not seem to know the meaning of the phrase."@en1
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