Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-02-Speech-1-077"
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"en.20030602.6.1-077"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I see this debate and the resolution as being about self-respect. This Parliament has been directly elected for twenty-four years. In a year’s time, these direct elections to Europe’s citizens’ chamber will involve the citizens of twenty-five Member States of the European Union. In a few weeks’ time, the Convention on the Future of Europe will be presenting a draft treaty for a European Constitution, and the next Intergovernmental Conference will be getting underway.
There are important roles to be played by parties – including European parties – by the European Parliament as the only EU institution directly elected by the European public, by the citizens’ representatives, all of which are an important part of the European project. To this day, nevertheless, there is no Statute for European Political Parties; despite that fact, there is to this day no Statute for Members of the European Parliament. The time for them has come; indeed, the resolution is overdue, and I tell you that today’s debate is important, because it is not only the Council that needs to do its homework on many issues – we do too, transparently, determinedly, comprehensibly, and in full awareness of our responsibilities, and, if the game of ping-pong is to be brought to an end, then it has to be spelled out that we decided that seven hundred MEPs were sufficient; it was the Council, in Nice, who arbitrarily increased our number. We are enacting the Statute for Members of the European Parliament on the basis of a report produced by outside experts. So far, the Council has not made the choice as to whether to go for a uniform European Statute or twenty-five differing assessments of the same work, and so, to put it briefly, our development from a parliamentary assembly into a European Parliament has not yet been completed.
The public nature of this debate also means that we have to openly address the point that no member of a national parliament – exceptions prove the rule – travels as much as we do. No national parliament has more democratic freedoms than we do. No national parliament is as consistent as we are in increasing the amount of work it does. Although nobody can say that he does not need to improve, to become more efficient and more professional, most of us in this House do good work, work that has a value of its own and requires framework conditions specific to itself. In the coming weeks, the new European order will come into being. This will also involve a new role for the European Parliament and the revaluation of its freely elected members. All these things justify a transparent and uniform statute for the Members of the European Parliament. There is nothing to be said in favour of deficient self-confidence or of populist self-laceration, nor indeed of superciliousness or arrogance. It is important and right that the fundamental issue that Mr Rothley and I have raised should be decided rather than continuing to be postponed. Ladies and gentlemen, let us, with all the representatives of the Member States, not be afraid of making decisions or of the decisions that may be taken."@en1
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