Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-05-Speech-4-041"
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"en.20021205.2.4-041"2
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"Mr President, the Commission’s major contribution to the work of the Convention can only encourage those who believe that Europe needs a Constitutional Treaty before the reunification stage starts. The new constitutional engineering work can only be based on in-depth, responsible dialogue between the representatives of the European and national institutions. The Convention will therefore increasingly have to become a forum not for thrashing out different positions but for finding the best compromise, a compromise which confirms the two forms of legitimacy in Europe – the Community and the intergovernmental. The new Europe, founded on the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, must be politically strong and have economic credibility. To this end, we need to give it a single voice in foreign policy. It must be a Europe with a small number of effective, well-defined competences, including, in addition to foreign policy, defence, security, immigration control, the single market and the management of the economy. It must be a federation of nation States but not an interfering Superstate. It must be an institution with a stable balance of the powers of the three institutions: Parliament, Council and Commission.
Of course, the principle of the six-monthly rotation of the Presidency of the Union will have to be changed. The Commission’s proposal, outlined yesterday in
and today in this House, is reminiscent of the French model, with the Commission in the role of Mr Raffarin and the Council in the role of Mr Chirac. I wonder whether it might be possible to achieve a compromise whereby there would be a single Commission and Council President, who would be put forward by the Council and elected by two-thirds majority vote in Parliament.
One last point. The Europe we are building cannot afford to lose its Judaeo-Christian roots, which are the guarantee of the secularity of the institution. If, in the future, we were to attempt to build a Union without taking into account our history, that would be tantamount to building a castle with no foundations."@en1
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