Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-24-Speech-3-107"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20011024.5.3-107"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I have asked to speak in this debate firstly in order to express my personal gratitude and that of my group to Mr Poos for his wonderful report. It really is a piece of work carried out with knowledge of the subject, not only because he is a veteran of the Council, but because I witnessed perfectly, ten years ago when we were preparing the Treaty of Maastricht, how Mr Poos, then a member of the Council with the government of Mr Santer, along with Mr Santer, showed the same attitude of openness, cooperation and solidarity towards Parliament which he is now proposing in his report. The result was the Treaty of Maastricht, which gave us codecision. I believe that we must salute his coherent and serious political track record.
With regard to codecision, we are not just dealing with a reform of the Council as such, but we are an interested party in the matter. Codecision has allowed us to develop a shared culture in which the Council, for the first time, has been opening up to Parliament. We must consolidate this. There is a very important step proposed by the Poos report, which is that the Council, in legislative session, should act publicly. If there is an insufficient number of Ministers, they could apply the rule applied by Parliament: that votes should be nominal, and if members are not present, they should not be paid allowances. These are therefore measures which can be applied straight away and which do not have to await the reform. From this point of view, I believe that Mrs Neyts-Uyttebroeck, whose path has taken the opposite course, having moved on from Parliament to the Council, can introduce a degree of freshness into the work of the Council. I hope she can cooperate with us.
A final observation, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen: we are on the eve of the Convention; we have fought for it in Parliament and we believe that we also have to cooperate positively in the process of reforming our institutions, which are interdependent on each other, in a way which means that we cannot reform one without taking account of the others.
In conclusion, I believe that we have to teach by example. We are awaiting the Council meeting on the 30 October, from which we want a unanimous position from the Council with regard to the Belgian proposal on taxation, in order to bring about the statute of Members once and for all; we also believe that the package of anti-terrorist measures is a great opportunity to demonstrate to our co-citizens that we are united. And lastly, the President-in-Office of the Council will allow me to point out that we would like her, with a view to Laeken, between the White Paper on Governance and the Mandelkern report, which is with the Council, to present us with a coherent proposal which is not based on a reduction of Parliament’s legislative powers. That would also help the reform."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples