Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-31-Speech-4-091"
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"en.20010531.3.4-091"2
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"My colleagues and I in the French delegation of the Union for a Europe of Nations Group voted against the Treaty of Nice, but since others who also voted against it did so for different reasons, we feel it is essential to explain our reasons, so as to make things quite clear.
We did not vote against the Treaty of Nice because it did not go far enough, as the more rampant supporters of federalism believe. Nor did we vote against it because it went too far, a complaint voiced among a certain number of schizophrenics who secretly dream of reversing the whole process. We voted against it because, quite simply, it is heading in the wrong direction.
However, although we are extremely concerned by some of the suggestions that are still being made before this House as soon as there is any mention of the prospect of any further abandoning of sovereignty on the part of the nation states which are the Member States of the Union, we were, nonetheless, pleasantly surprised by some parts of the final version. This was because, on the one hand, at a functional level, it strongly curbs the supranational trend which seeks to bring us, as rapidly as possible, to the total obliteration of States, in favour of a bulimic and uncontrollable Commission, and because, on the other hand, it goes beyond the somewhat petty reservations of some people and persists in preparing for enlargement, thereby reminding us that, before being a standardised and uniform single market, Europe is, in principle and above all, a political structure in which, of course, the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe and the Mediterranean, despite being excluded at the moment, of course have their place.
In spite of these sensible reactions, however, the Treaty of Nice was unable to escape from the logic, so fatal to the democracies and peoples of Europe, that in accordance with Declaration 23 on the post-Nice process, the European Union should be committed to a ‘constitutional’ movement which can only lead to a European federal state, the affirmation and future functioning of which are totally incompatible with the continued existence of nation states, whatever the two heads of the French Government, Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin, might think. Moreover, even though political semantics has already had to accommodate other strange bedfellows which are just as incongruous as this impossible idea of a federation of nation States (we only have to think back to the hilarious concept of democratic centralism), history teaches us that, in the end, people will no longer put up with being abused by what is, at best a tragic error, and, at worst, an unforgivable lie."@en1
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"(Speech was cut short pursuant to Article 137 of the Rules of Procedure)"1
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