Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-20-Speech-3-273"
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"en.20021120.7.3-273"2
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".
Mr President, we make no secret of the fact that there is a certain amount of disagreement concerning the legal basis for these activities. However, first I would like to emphasise that nobody has raised any objection to the idea of holding tripartite summits. Indeed, it was supported by everyone both in Laeken and in Barcelona, so there is no disagreement on that. Nonetheless, there are certain legal problems which are fairly involved. In brief, I can say that the Commission proposes to use Article 202 as the legal basis. The Legal Service of the Council is however of the opinion that this provision cannot be used because it does not give the Council unrestricted decision-making competence. It merely refers to the articles in the Treaty that specify the measures which the Council can take. And according to the Council’s Legal Service, that does not provide a legal basis.
And when the Commission proposes that the summit should consist of the Council’s presidency at Head of State and Government level, the Council’s Legal Service believes that the Council (employment, social policy and health and consumer protection) is not able to make a decision on the introduction of a summit at Head of State and Government level. This might be able to be solved somehow or other if there is a will to do so. Neither does the Council’s Legal Service agree with the Commission’s proposal that the results of the summit – which is to take place the day before the European Council – are to be presented to the European Council in the form of a report. It points out that this would contravene the rules on the organisation of the work of the European Council which the Council itself adopted in Seville in June and that it would be contrary to Article 2 of the Council’s Rules of Procedure, which oblige the Council to prepare the European Councils, including the necessary coordination of all the preparatory work. Moreover, Article 2 sets out time periods for drawing up the provisional agenda of the European Council and the submission of contributions to the discussions and these time periods are not complied with under the proposal. However, concerning this point I would like to say that it can probably be solved with the right will. It simply requires some further discussion.
I believe that the first problem I mentioned, namely the use of Article 202 as the legal basis, is the biggest. But let us see whether we can make any progress with it. I have now given an open and honest account of where the disagreement lies. Sometimes you want to ask the lawyers if they cannot try to reach agreement before letting us politicians know, but that is probably easier said than done. Perhaps the Treaty basis is not always equally clear, in which case we have to find a political solution which allows us to do what we want to without it being claimed that we are breaking the rules which form the basis of our work.
These were a couple of issues. I can assure Mr Ettl that we are not wasting time. However, until we find a correct formal solution we may have to continue with informal summits, that is, follow the informal procedure.
I would like to say to Mrs Figueiredo that I am fully aware of what she mentioned concerning the representativeness of the parties, but this has not yet been discussed in detail.
I do not want to start a major legal debate here in Parliament. I simply felt that I had a duty to state the reasons why the Council is not yet ready to start a formal dialogue as requested. However, we are prepared to continue the more informal dialogue until a solution can be found."@en1
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