Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-04-Speech-3-020"
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"en.20030604.2.3-020"2
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"Mr President, I congratulate you, President-in-Office, on the progress on enlargement that has been made during the Greek Presidency. The special Athens Council in April was a landmark in the history of Europe, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and we look forward to the ten applicant states taking their rightful place in the new Europe. However, if we look at the priorities set by the Greek Presidency, two of them in particular have proved to be something of a disappointment.
Finally I say this; we have long been the most ardent supporters of enlargement and the right of accession states to take their place at the European top table, but our Europe is one where diversity is celebrated, not one where countries are forced into an institutional straitjacket. We want a Europe that is democratic and prosperous and works with the United States to defend our freedoms and confront common threats. The Convention takes us down a different road to a Europe where the nation state is no longer the foundation upon which the Union rests.
First the Lisbon process. After three years, this agenda is stalled, indeed it is going backwards. It is disappointing that the presidency has been unable to persuade governments to get their act together on issues which are as fundamental as this to the prosperity of people across Europe. As a result, many EU countries will be facing a future of economic stagnation and deflation.
Secondly, the presidency wanted to see the new Europe as an international motor for peace and cooperation. Of course, the Iraq crisis was a difficult one; however, in my view the way in which during the Greek Presidency the 'gang of four' convened in April in Brussels to consider alternative defence structures to NATO merely reinforced anti-American sentiment in Europe.
Thessaloniki will mark the end of the European Convention when former president Giscard d'Estaing presents his conclusions, as we have heard during the course of this debate.
At Laeken Heads of State and Government said that within the Union, the European institutions must be brought closer to its citizens, but if we look at the draft articles in the Convention document, we find this ambition has not been achieved. Indeed in many ways it heads in precisely the opposite direction. The Convention is proposing a European Union which, in my view, is more centralised, more bureaucratic, in many ways less democratic and certainly more federalist than is currently the case.
I am well recognised in my country as a longstanding supporter of Britain's committed membership of the European Union, but the document that Heads of Government are likely to see in Thessaloniki is one that changes the nature of the relationship between Member States and the European Union. In summary: a Constitution, incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, legal status for the Union, a President, a Foreign Minister, the collapse of the second and third pillars, a common foreign security policy, the eventual framing of an EU defence policy, the requirement that both economic policies and taxation be harmonised and the establishment of a European public prosecutor.
The British Government has been calling all this in the UK just a tidying-up exercise and therefore not worth putting to the people in a referendum. In contrast the Danish Prime Minister has made it clear that he will be submitting the Constitution to a referendum, because the EU Constitution is so new and large a document that it would be right to hold a referendum on it. I can tell this House that 80% of the British public agree.
This is not just a case of the British Government dismissing the right of its own people to have a say on their future, it is rather that the Convention proposals fundamentally change the relationship between the Union and Member States and the way in which we are all governed.
For those who cherish the concept of a United States of Europe, the blueprint set out in this Convention is based on this fundamental fact, and this has been honestly and sincerely articulated by President Prodi and many speakers in this debate today. When the Inter-Governmental Conference begins its work later this year, my party is determined to see that the accession states not only have a right to contribute to the discussion, but have a vote in the Council on the crucial decisions that it will take. The outcome of the IGC will impact on the people of Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, just as much as London, Paris and Berlin, and it is outrageous that they should in any way be excluded from having a proper and democratic role in the outcome."@en1
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