Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-022"
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"en.20020313.2.3-022"2
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"Mr President, I should like to warn against our treating the new candidate countries as second-class applicants.
In the Convention, the national parliaments met and appointed their two representatives in the Bureau, without the representatives from the candidate countries being called at all. On 25 February, I submitted a proposal to the effect that the candidate countries should themselves be able to elect two representatives to the Bureau. The proposal was neither circulated nor debated. The Bureau has held its first meetings without the new countries being represented. The latter must naturally have completely equal rights and also be entitled to have material interpreted in their own languages.
This weekend, the prime ministers are meeting in Barcelona. The large countries are attacking the equal rights enshrined in the rotating presidencies. There is the risk of a situation in which the EU is run on an intergovernmental basis by representatives of large countries who, in that way, act together supranationally in relation to the smaller countries. That is how I interpret Mr Solana’s discussion paper for the Summit. It is a variant which the EU’s critics should not be alone in criticising. The proposals are also a sign to the candidate countries that they can certainly join us but not on an equal footing.
The Commission’s proposal on agriculture also operates with two classes of Member State. It would be cheaper and more sensible to phase out price support in the EU before enlargement and to provide the candidate countries and our own farmers with compensation.
Signalling different treatment is wrong and deeply damaging. It is also the Nice Summit’s decision to give the Czech Republic and Hungary two fewer places in the European Parliament than are allocated to EU countries with fewer inhabitants. I wish once again to call upon the Commission to publish the so-called screening reports concerning how far the candidate countries have got with introducing our legislation. That is information which belongs to the people, both in our own and the candidate countries. In this case, it is everyone who is being discriminated against. Debates concerning legislation should be fully open, as they are in all the parliaments, and the people of the candidate countries must also be able to monitor the phasing out of their own laws. Mr Solana’s new discussion paper should have been submitted directly to ourselves, as I requested. Instead, I now hear about it through leaks. Let us put an end to this secretiveness and take the Commission to the Court of Justice if it does not hand over the screening reports."@en1
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