Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-30-Speech-3-077"
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"en.20010530.5.3-077"2
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"Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, I wish to make nine brief points. This report does not concern the Treaty of Nice; it is about the post-Nice process, the start of the political circus at the Laeken Summit, which will be held at the end of the year. Nice is no longer an issue – it has galloped off into the sunset. The so-called crisis facing the European Union is a result of this federalist obsession. We could concentrate on reforming the institutions so that they function more effectively. We could begin here in Parliament, where democratic representation is so lacking in authenticity and so mediocre. But no! Instead, you want to reform everything else. You spend all your time discussing changing the balance between the institutions and this is the source of the fight for power that you are so ready to criticise; the struggle between the Member States and the struggle between the institutions. This has opened up the fight for power.
The federalists like invoking the founding fathers, but they would do better to read what they said. In his famous speech of 9 May 1950, Robert Schuman, said: “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity”. This should suffice for us to disregard this report, which is full of attacks and plans, completely ignoring the practical actions that have been taken to achieve a lasting, de facto solidarity. Where is the real cohesion?
By the same token, I must thank Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for having debunked one of the myths of federalism once and for all, which is the erroneous idea that it serves the smallest and the weakest States. This is a proposal to centralise power, to wipe out Member States, and to destroy social and economic cohesion. Exactly the opposite.
We do not want to see a United States of Europe, but a Community. We do not want a federation of nation states, but a Union made up of the nation states that we are. Nothing more and nothing less. Who is abandoning ship here? Who is actually destroying the Europe that has been successfully achieved? Drafting a European constitution is another perverse fantasy. If there is no single European people, there can be no legitimate constituent European power. If there is no constituent European power, there can be no European constitution. Treaties can only be reformed by Treaties. There is an Arabic proverb that says, ‘words are man’s invention for concealing his thoughts’…
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