Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-30-Speech-3-106"
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"en.20010530.5.3-106"2
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"Mr President. I would like to join in the praise that many Members have given to Mr Seguro and Mr Méndez de Vigo. I share Mr Corbett’s view that if the rapporteurs had not done such a good job then Parliament would in all probability have recommended voting against Nice. Despite the fact that I share the criticism that has been advanced, I believe that a no vote would have been much worse than a yes. The reason for this is that the important enlargement process would then have been delayed, which is not something that I want to see happen.
I agree with much of the criticism. The major critical viewpoints concern the fact that following Nice the Treaty is more difficult to understand, which also affects our citizens’ ability to participate in the Europe debate. It is a difficult treaty that is difficult to understand. Moreover, it risks becoming ineffective through the fact that we have made it more difficult to make decisions by qualified majority. It is true that more areas are covered by qualified majority voting, but these are not that important. The really important areas were not brought into this form of decision-making, which is unfortunate now that the Union is being enlarged.
This is something that we must change. We need more decisions by qualified majority and codetermination rights for Parliament.
The second form of criticism concerns openness and the way in which the Treaty was negotiated. I have heard that some have likened the negotiations to the choice of a pope, with people having shut themselves away in a room and then come out with a compromise. No outsiders were allowed to participate in the process.
Let us not do this again. Let us start the convention, and let it become the starting point for the next Intergovernmental Conference. After all, it does not mean that we must not carry on national debate with organisations and others. In this connection I also think that it is important that we accept our responsibility as politicians. We must not make the institutional debate the main issue; we must start from the objective questions: What do we actually want to do with the EU? How is this to be done? What tools shall we use?
We must start with the objective debate."@en1
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