Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-15-Speech-3-163"
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"en.20020515.8.3-163"2
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"Mr President, I would also like to start by thanking Mr Javier Solana, the Secretary-General of the Council, for attending this debate and by congratulating him on the document he presented in March and which was the subject of a preliminary debate in Barcelona. I find it difficult to understand the criticisms made by some Members given that this document is largely in line with this Parliament's own views. Nor can I subscribe to the critical comments that I have seen in certain diplomatic circles to the effect that the document produced by the Secretary-General of the Council does not contain many new ideas, but is a collection of ideas that have already been discussed for a long time in the Council. As I see it, this is not anything negative, it is in fact positive, especially if the decisions to be taken in Seville are to be effective and vigorous and cover ground that has been an issue for a long time. However, the Heads of State and Government have hesitated to take such decisions or have even resisted taking them.
There are sometimes areas in politics on which we all agree, and there are other areas on which we all differ. The issues of building Europe and institutional reform do not fall into either of those categories. We neither agree on everything nor differ on everything. These are issues on which we partly agree. I would also like to make another point: sometimes we agree on objectives but not on the means of achieving them; at other times we agree on the means but not the objectives. We wish to clearly distance ourselves from the motion for a resolution presented by the Committee on Constitutional Affairs in that it suggests that the proposed reform should favour the Community method or the intergovernmental method.
We do not believe this is the path we should be going down. But we agree with the concrete steps proposed, especially regarding what must be achieved in the short term and as regards the so-called transparency of the functioning of the Council in its legislative capacity. I even believe that it would be helpful for us to give this transparency another name, because the transparency we are talking about here is not the same thing as transparency in access to documents. Publicising the workings of the Council in its legislative capacity or open meetings are in fact important ways of achieving reform in working in this area and a way of tackling the heart of the democratic deficit of the European Union.
I am associated with sectors that are calling for greater involvement of national parliaments in the building of Europe. And I even believe that this can only happen when the Council opens its doors during legislative debates. Our colleagues in the national parliaments will relate and react differently to EU legislative work done at Council level if they can directly follow what our governments, the governments of every Member State, are discussing and the positions that they are adopting within the Council.
So there is a serious contradiction in this secretive approach, a fundamental contradiction between the democratic basis of the Council and the undemocratic way in which the Council works. We believe that this needs to be put right, and that is not because we want to weaken the intergovernmental axis of the European Union; just the opposite in fact. We want to protect that axis and strengthen it, but we want to give it more visibility and make it more democratic and participatory.
I would like to see reform heading in this direction and to leave other subjects until later, in particular the more sensitive issue of the presidency of the European Union. We are not willing to contemplate any departure from the principle of the rotating presidency."@en1
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