Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-017"
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"en.20020206.2.3-017"2
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"I wish to begin by congratulating you on the state-of-the-European-Parliament address, which perhaps, like other state-of-the-Union addresses, should become an annual event.
I personally think you have made a very positive start as President of the European Parliament. If we are to carry out the reform agenda that you have discussed, then we need an
in this House. The way in which you have engaged the Bureau of Parliament, the Conference of Presidents, the committee chairs in your agenda, already in your first month, shows a determination to work across the whole of this House in order to deliver reform, and that is very encouraging.
But, at the same time, you have also done the same with the institutions. Although we should not overstate these things, there is already an improved relationship between the Commission and the Council and this institution – and, perhaps most importantly – you have shown a willingness to take tough decisions. That is something which, I am afraid, will become more and more a feature of your presidency, but we will have more and more occasion to take hard decisions.
If I have any criticism of your speech, it was not in terms of the content – there was hardly a word I disagreed with – but that I perhaps detected an element of "mission creep" in your speech. If you try to do everything, you may end up not succeeding in doing very much. I would encourage you to stick to just two or three key items: enlargement being the vital one; the internal reform of this House being the second; and also, as others have said, the communication strategy of this House to connect better with the citizens of the European Union. If you achieve progress in these three areas, you will have achieved very much indeed.
Your speech also correctly got to the dilemma that we face. If we are to improve our standing as an institution, then we have to reform internally. That means a little navel-gazing. However, if we spend two-and-a-half years navel-gazing, then we will be even further away from the citizens out there. So we have to combine the two. We have to conduct reform within the structures of this House while on the floor of this House, as you rightly say, connecting with the citizens by discussing the major items that face them in their daily lives – to actually talk about the issues that matter out there, not the issues that matter in here. It is out there that really matters to us.
Mr Dell'Alba made a point I had wanted to make. When you talked about inviting the members of the applicant countries' parliaments to be present at the enlargement debate here, I agreed with you, but my immediate reaction was to wonder where were they going to sit.
Then I looked around the Chamber and realised that there would be no problem in finding seats for them in this House. There we have a double dilemma: one that you have identified, which is to make our debates more lively and interesting; but another one, which we have tried in the past to solve and need to try again: to make this plenary the focus of our four days' work in Strasbourg. There is plenty of other time for committee and delegation meetings, and for meeting lobbyists, etc., but when we are in Strasbourg, the plenary should be the centre-point of our activities. In fact, for most Members it is a side-show when they come to Strasbourg; the average Member spends less than five hours in this Chamber during a Strasbourg week. It should be where they are most of the time; it should be the focus of our activity; you should feel that if you have not been present at the plenary, you have missed out on something. Instead, sometimes you feel that when you have been in the plenary you have missed out on something that has been going on elsewhere. So we have to refocus to make this the centre of activity: a livelier Chamber where we really discuss the day-to-day issues.
One last but important point, because both you, Mr President, and Mr Poettering in different ways referred to it. I welcome the decision on the von Wogau report – it was a right decision. But I do not believe, as you indicated, that better regulation or the long-term solution to what Mr von Wogau was dealing with in the Lamfalussy proposals can be left to the Convention. We have to focus on that in the next two or three months because the June Summit will deal with governance and better regulation, and it may be, if we do not focus on that now, that by the time we get to the Convention the pass will have been sold in June, so it is important that we look at this issue now and do not think that von Wogau was even a five- or six-month solution. It was a short two- or three-month solution to a very important point in terms of the powers of Parliament.
Thank you very much and, again, congratulations on the progress you have made so far."@en1
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