Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-154"
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"en.20020206.8.3-154"2
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"Mr President, as colleagues know, today across Europe there is popular discontent with regard to Europe's apparent disconnection from ordinary life. The European political process is widely seen as an elite preoccupation of little or no relevance to many outside the political classes. Quite rightly concern about this crosses national boundaries and the ideological divide. It is a wish to try to remedy this discontent that lies behind Mr Napolitano's report, which we in the PPE-DE Group support.
There have been a number of responses to this unhappy and unacceptable state of affairs, one of which included the suggestion of establishing a second European parliamentary chamber comprising national parliamentarians. The conclusions of this report, as the rapporteur has already mentioned, echo a recently published report from the House of Lords in my own country. They recognise the important role of national parliaments, but reject the argument for a further second chamber. Rather than further encumbering the European political process, this report recognises that it is for the European Parliament in its sphere, and national parliaments in theirs, in accordance with their own national traditions, to scrutinise their own governments' conduct of European business and activities in the Council of Ministers.
Consensus has rightly emerged that an important component of the way to reconnect Europe with national political life, and through that with European citizens, is through an alliance between the European Parliament and national parliaments and national politics, which at present seem to give insufficient weight to thorough and comprehensive scrutiny of European matters. In this report Mr Napolitano, as befits the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and rapporteur, has most skilfully woven together an approach to improving relations between the European Parliament and national parliaments and to strengthening cooperation between them.
The pedantic constitutional purist from any one Member State might cavil at some of the detail, but this report provides a template for action which cannot be carried out by any single parliament. Changes must take place in a wider framework of change and democratic openness on all sides. If political and democratic openness and acceptability matter – and no political group in this House believes in them more than we in the PPE-DE Group do – the Napolitano report represents an important starting point. But we must not complacently rest on our laurels now. This report represents words; we must now see action. Change, in line with the thrust of the report's conclusions and catalysed by the Laeken Convention as the rapporteur himself pointed out, is needed to start to remedy these democratic deficiencies in the European political system which, if left unattended, could be so damaging."@en1
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