Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-143"
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"en.20010704.3.3-143"2
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"The European Union is about to invent a new form of democracy: democracy without the people. That is the only conclusion we can draw from the arrogant way the Gothenburg Council dismissed the Irish vote. Today the new President-in-Office of the Council, Guy Verhofstadt, has just confirmed this impression by giving us a preview of the conclusions of the debate that is supposed to be held in preparation for the 2004 Intergovernmental Conference.
The way this debate is being organised in France, following the communiqué of 11 April this year published jointly by the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic, makes it quite clear that it has been rigged from the start.
Various people pretend they want to initiate a discussion on the future of Europe, but our country deliberately evaded the issue of the ratification of the Nice Treaty, which is vital in this regard. The Constitutional Council was not consulted, there was no referendum, the debates in the French National Assembly and the Senate were extremely short, the speeches were mediocre, except for those of members of the pro-sovereignty group, including Philippe de Villiers, who seem to be the only ones to have retained their freedom of thought in this debacle that has hit the national political community. This means that the document that is most crucial to the future of the Union, the new supranational developments set out in the Nice Treaty, have been taken out of the debate.
For the rest, it is clear that everything has been organised in such a way that the discussion forums only produce conclusions acceptable to the federalists. Not only are the meetings prepared by the prefects – which says a lot about their independence vis à vis the government – their conclusions will actually be drafted by a group of ten experts freely chosen by the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. I myself wrote to the two heads of the executive on 20 April this year to ask them to ensure that this group was made up of all the political elements elected at the European elections. The result is plain to see: among the appointments that have just been made it would be hard to find any opposition, however slight, to the line pursued by Brussels.
To crown it all, this ridiculous procedure is to be closed in October, which means that the great national debate will have lasted four months, of which two were holiday months. But it is easy to understand why it will be concluded so speedily: at the end of the year we will be entering the dangerous period when we have to exchange our national coins and banknotes for euros. Clearly, our national leaders have no wish to be burdened with a debate about Europe at that particular moment."@en1
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