Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-151"
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"en.20020206.8.3-151"2
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".
Mr President, the forthcoming Convention will only fulfil its mandate if it provides convincing responses on a key point: how to guarantee the democratic legitimacy of the process of European integration. This is the starting point for the report which has been adopted by the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and is now before the plenary.
We are, of course, all aware that the Convention has to redefine the Union’s missions, its role on the world stage, in global development and in working for peace, its growth and cohesion policies and its policy of security in freedom and justice. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss all the rest as pure institutional technicalities, as abstract exercises in institutional engineering of no interest whatsoever to the citizens.
One reason why the European cause has lost the citizens’ support is because the difficulty of influencing or even understanding the Union’s decisions makes them feel removed from too many of them. To regain support, it is vital to make it absolutely clear who is taking the decisions in the Union, how the decisions can be made transparent and comprehensible and how they can be monitored, and by which institutions the citizens can be effectively represented in Europe. All these points are questions precisely of democracy, indeed they are questions which are crucial to democracy. The role of the parliamentary institution with regard to these issues is vital, although not decisive in itself.
We must therefore take a firm decision to strengthen the role of the parliamentary institution in the Union’s structure, to further parliamentarise the Union, supplementing the progress achieved during the 90s. Parliamentarisation must occur in two areas: the European Parliament and the national parliaments. Both contribute equally to the democratic legitimisation of the European Union as a Union of citizens and peoples rather than just States. To spell it out, if, as the European Parliament, we have been guilty of a certain exclusivism, we must change our attitude. We need to eliminate any mutual mistrust between the European Parliament and national parliaments; we need to understand the concerns of national parliaments and propose appropriate solutions.
The report I am presenting to you sets forth three paths for action: Firstly, national parliaments should have greater guidance and supervisory powers over their respective governments and should be able to exercise these powers effectively. Secondly, there needs to be increasingly close, systematic cooperation between the European Parliament and national parliaments, including through interparliamentary agreements signed by the respective leaders. This is an innovative idea whose development I entrust chiefly to the initiative of the President of the European Parliament. Thirdly, both national and European Members of Parliament should be endowed with a constituent power, to be shared with the governments and the Commission – as in the Convention, which is about to start work – to work on revising the Treaties with a view, we can now say, to producing a genuine European Constitution.
These are the appropriate solutions to pursue, not those which would lead to confusion of the roles of the European Parliament and national parliaments and add to the unwieldiness of the Union’s institutional structure and decision-making mechanisms.
In particular, as a House of Lords report has regretfully shown, a second Chamber made up of members of national parliaments ‘would be an unreal solution to some real problems’.
It is my firm hope that the spirit of this report will be properly interpreted and welcomed and that, with your support, the Convention will have the benefit of our contribution."@en1
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