Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-17-Speech-1-103"
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"en.20011217.3.1-103"2
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Mr President, this debate began over four hours ago, and I can understand that great demands have been made on the attention of the European Parliament. However, for my part, I have listened carefully to all the speakers, right to the end, and I must say that throughout this debate the dialogue and the speeches in this House have been of a consistently high quality.
Almost all those who have spoken have expressed their satisfaction at the end, not only of this Laeken Council, but also of six months of Belgian Presidency, and I have no problem – quite the contrary – in joining in with your thanks, not only to Guy Verhofstadt and Louis Michel, but to all the Belgian Ministers and all their colleagues. I should also like to thank them, and why not, for the quality of the relations that have been maintained and even strengthened during the Belgian Presidency, whatever the problems or the difficulties between the Council and our colleagues and the members of the European Commission.
I should just like to say a few words about the Convention and the hopes that it inspires. First of all, Mr Swoboda and James Elles, and others too perhaps, have raised the issue of the civil society. I believe it is very important that this new framework is being put in place for the first time on institutional issues, after the initial successful experience of the previous Convention on fundamental rights, though that was a restricted, limited exercise, and probably less sensitive than the one that we are about to begin. I believe it is very important that this Convention should be open, and should be able to take note of what is happening outside it. One way or another, this forum, this network of non-governmental organisations, regions and associations will have to be able to make its voice heard and, when necessary, heard by the Convention. I have taken note of the suggestion that the website should be a two-way affair, so that it cannot only disseminate information but also pass on opinions and criticisms. This also reminds me of an idea which I have already mentioned in this House, that this Convention should be a sort of sounding box, both for governments and for the public. May I also say that it would be very worthwhile during a period – and I am thinking about the year 2002 – in which six or seven, or maybe more if I am not mistaken, of the countries of the Union will be holding general elections, and therefore we shall have to pay great attention to the quality of the European debate, because we are well aware that, whether national politicians like it or not, the European dimension is bound to form part of the debates in each of our countries. That is the first point that I wanted to make.
My second point concerns the praesidium, which I shall be part of together with my friend and colleague Antonio Vitorino. This praesidium, consisting of twelve people, will be led by a trio of the highest quality, three statesmen – and I choose that word advisedly – namely Mr Amato, Mr Dehaene and the President Mr Giscard d’Estaing. They are three statesmen by virtue, frankly, of their age, but some would also say by virtue of their experience or their wisdom. I know all three of them, and what I can tell you about them, and in particular about the President of the Convention, is that when it comes to their European convictions, they all have a youthful spirit and a dynamism that I would like to see in a certain number of much more eurosceptic politicians who are in some cases twenty or thirty years younger. That is what seems important to me, their dynamism and the youthfulness of their convictions, together with their European qualifications and their authority, which is something that we shall need. What I would like to say, echoing Louis Michel, is that of course there will be the President and the two Vice-Presidents, but they will have to work as colleagues alongside the praesidium, and by listening to and leading the debates of the Convention as a whole. They will not, therefore, be working alone, but rather in solidarity, which is a very different matter indeed.
The European Council at Laeken – and the Belgian Presidency did very well to achieve such a result – gave this Convention a dynamic mandate, an open mandate, thereby removing the first risk that I had imagined or feared, namely the risk of a closed mandate, a mandate blocked by the four topics of the Treaty of Nice, which would have given rise to great disappointment here, to me personally and also to public opinion, and which would have restricted our work to the legal and the technical, without any political perspective. However, that did not happen. The Laeken mandate is an open mandate, and it even allows us to raise almost any issue. This means, however, that there is another risk, if I may say so. That risk is that, by being based on such a broad mandate, on such great confidence, the Convention will be transformed into a sort of academic forum producing results which are too far out of line with the mandate that has been laid down. We must take care not to make this Convention a forum which will cease to be listened to by the European Council. This is also why the selection of the three people who will be leading this Convention is so important, because the three people in question have the ear and the respect of the European Council. We have to steer a course between these two dangers. The first danger has now been removed, but the second one remains. What I am trying to say is that we shall have to produce work that is responsible and useful, and that can be used by the European Council, which will then have to go on to make the final decisions. Basically, I believe that this Convention, which is a great opportunity for European debate and for future stages of European integration to be carried out in a more open, more democratic and more transparent way, is itself responsible for proving that the right method has been chosen, so that we can avoid going back to the old method, which was strictly intergovernmental. Together, we, the European Parliament, the Commission, the Council and the national parliaments, will bear that responsibility, together with the candidate countries, sitting around the same table and on an equal footing with us, plus of course the active representatives of the Committee of the Regions and of organised civil society. We shall have the responsibility of ensuring that it works, that it succeeds, because if it does succeed, in a way that is sustainable in the future, then I believe that any future reforms in years to come will no longer be carried out in the old way, but will be carried out using this more transparent and more open method.
We shall also have a second responsibility, that of putting into perspective the institutional issues, and of putting them into a political perspective. The Convention mandate allows us to do this. It allows us, in particular, in the first few months of 2002, to spend a little time, among ourselves and with others, asking ourselves some fundamental questions. What do we want to do together? What is the meaning that we wish to give to the European project? What do you expect – and by you I mean not only the institutions but also the Member States, and the governments of the Member States, the Heads of State and Government, and the national parliaments – what do you expect of the European project? I believe that the President of the Convention intends – and I support him in that intention – to ask each country what it expects of the European project, by using modern technology and perhaps by actually going to the countries in question and visiting each capital city, if the praesidium so wishes. For two years now, ever since Joschka Fischer, we have heard all the Heads of State and Government and many Ministers making grandiose declarations and powerful speeches. I think that we must go further, and ask them to explain what they want this European project to mean, what they expect of it, in other words we must demand a sort of political verification. Only then, after such verification, will it be time to place in that political perspective the institutional work that has been carried out on all the subjects that have been mentioned, including the constitutional process that was adopted at Laeken. That is what I wanted to say, namely that we must carry out responsible, useful and usable work, and we must prove that from now on we can ensure that the European Union advances and progresses other than by using methods which, in my opinion, belong to the past.
Mr President, I should like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak at the end of this debate, and I should also like to thank you for the quality of that debate, and at the same time I too would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."@en1
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