Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-29-Speech-4-194"
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"en.20011129.2.4-194"2
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"On 4 September, I had the opportunity in this House, in the presence of President Prodi, to offer an initial reaction to the Commission’s White Paper on European governance. On that occasion I said that concern for deepening democracy, within the orderly framework of representative democracy, seemed to me to be absent from the text. There was confirmation of that criticism from all quarters during the subsequent debates. It should be pointed out that the title of the report, European ‘governance’, a word which has no clear meaning in practically any language of the European Union, has simply increased the misunderstanding. But perhaps that was deliberate and intended to cloud the issue. Because the more one thinks about it, the less innocent this White Paper appears.
I see one inconsistency, one omission and one fallacy in it.
The inconsistency lies in the principle which, according to the White Paper (title IV, page 37), inspired the authors: "
". This is as contradictory as the ‘federation of nation-States’ of Jacques Delors, of whom the principal author of the White Paper is a close associate.
In the confusion resulting from it, the linchpin of the European decision-making process, the national State, is abandoned. The report’s proposals are aimed at (page 38) "
", developing interaction with "
", strengthening public confidence in the use of experts, etc... All these actions have the effect of bypassing the national States, which disappear from the scope of the report, when they should be the key element.
Finally, as I said on 4 September, the White Paper seems to believe that ‘governance’ can function while disregarding representative democracy. The Kaufmann report, voted for by our House, vigorously corrects this fallacy, and we are pleased about that, but it fails to point out that representative democracy is, in turn, disturbed, even distorted, if national democracy is not at centre stage."@en1
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"providing a structure for the relationship between the European Union and civil society"1
"regional and local actors"1
"to integrate the peoples of Europe through scrupulous respect for national identities"1
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