Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-11-Speech-2-024"
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"en.20011211.2.2-024"2
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"Madam President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank the President-in-Office of the Council for her management during the Belgian Presidency and say that it truly demonstrates, in this case, that being a former Member of the European Parliament is good training for managing European affairs within a government. I believe that this is a type of training with a future.
Having said that, Mr President of the Commission, we must resolve the disagreement between us with sincerity and frankness. At the beginning of the legislature, my group asked the Commission to present a political programme for the purposes of the vote on its investiture, and that programme, as we said at the time, had to lead to an adjustment of the annual programme, not only in legislative terms.
What happened the other day in the Conference of Presidents, however, and what has happened again today, requires clarification. We have not asked you not to present the legislative programme, nor after the deadline. What we have asked is that you present a political programme, and you have produced a working programme: this is all very well, and we take note of it, but we also want a legislative programme, because we are one of the parties to codecision. And proof that we were right lies in the fact that I was told, last night, by e-mail, that the legislative programme had arrived as an annex.
It is important that we are able to respect the deadlines and agreements we are party to and, on that basis, you can organise the work as you see fit: by means of ‘planning’, ‘programming’, ‘rolling on’, or whatever you want. I very much fear that the number of officials filling in forms is going to increase. But that is your problem. You must fulfil your commitments to Parliament. In this respect, Mr President, I must say that you must improve the department or service of your secretariat which deals with mail, because we have raised a parliamentary question on how you are going to deal with the issue of the flax fine, specifically in Spain, and four Group Chairmen, despite the fact that the Liberal Group and the PPE-DE Group have blocked this question, which should have been seen in this House, have written to you and we are awaiting a reply. It is important – and I am happy that the Vice-President of the Commission is here – that we do not allow issues to fester. I would therefore be grateful if you could be more diligent with regard to this issue.
These problems relating to the programme are mere child’s play compared to the current situation. We are on the eve of the Laeken Summit and the fundamental issue is the defence of the Community method. And I say this because dark clouds are appearing on the horizon. Yesterday in this House, on behalf of my group – and I am pleased that the President-in-Office of the Council is here – we strongly supported the Belgian Presidency of the Council and the Council itself with regard to an issue which we feel is very important – I believe that President Verhofstadt is in Rome today – and that is that we manage to introduce, as fifteen countries, the anti-terrorist legislation which this Parliament, the Council and the Commission have supported. We believe that this is an important defence of the Community method. If it is not done by 15 countries, it will be done by 14. We would prefer it to be 15, but this is an issue on which we clearly support them.
We are also currently concerned about the fact, and I am referring to a point which Mr Poettering highlighted yesterday, that certain governments, of Austria and Italy, are opposed to democratic criteria appearing in the statute on political parties.
With regard to Laeken, Mr President of the Commission, the most interesting part of your speech was the final part, when you not only supported the Convention, but you gave it content, in complete agreement with the approach contained in the Leinen-Méndez de Vigo report. In relation to the Convention, I would ask you to defend what you have said here today in the European Council in Laeken, to make a coherent proposal and that that proposal, even if it has to be cooled down and digested, is not left on the shelf. I would like to know how that is going to be coordinated with the timetable for enlargement and the reform of the Treaties before 2004, and what your position is with regard to the membership of the praesidium of the Convention.
Furthermore, finally, do not leave the secretariat of the Convention to the Council; we must all participate in it, because a broader distribution always brings the best results. And, in this respect, Mr President, I would ask you to expand on the replies you have given in relation to the Convention. You call on Parliament and the Commission to work together – and I believe we can do great things in defence of the Community method – but it is important that you have the courage and the capacity to make use of your monopoly on initiative, which must not simply be a monopoly on operation, but which must be a means for achieving what you have proposed: texts of constitutional value and, above all, which reflect the democracy and transparency which we want in this enlarged Union."@en1
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