Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-18-Speech-3-024"
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"en.20030618.4.3-024"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, if the draft Constitution completed by the Convention really was the excellent document whose echoes resound through the speeches of my fellow Members, and if it responded to a need genuinely felt by the peoples of Europe, the champagne drunk in this room a week ago would have been drunk in our countries too. The hymn which was sung here would also have been sung in our countries. That, however, was not the case. The celebrations spread no further than the walls of this building; in other words, the current is still not flowing. That is a serious problem which, by all appearances, the Convention has not solved.
We want Europe to work better, but we do not think this is the way to go about it. Once again, the wrong method has been used, and we fear that this text may mark a return to the tensions and frustrations which prevailed in Amsterdam and Nice. We take issue with the desire to suppress all memory of the past, of history, of values intertwined with our roots. I am speaking specifically of the Christian
inscribed and engraved all over our experience.
We believe that the Convention served to clarify our options and their consequences. It did not, however, serve as a pretext for hasty decision-making – far from it! Furthermore, a look at the Nice or Laeken agenda is instructive. Are the Treaties really going to be simplified? Can a Treaty containing more than 400 articles and at least five protocols represent a genuine attempt at simplification, or might there have been a failure there? What can one say, moreover, about the participation of the national parliaments, which have made few really significant advances in terms of their participation in European integration?
Laeken called for more democracy and transparency. Even the way the Convention works, however, is a bad example and a bad omen for the future: its functions are subordinate to the supreme whim of its President and to what I might dub consensocracy, a form of democracy without elections, where not a single vote has taken place. Laeken also asked the European Union to grow closer to its citizens. I am not sure this has happened. If the idea of doing away with the rotating presidency goes ahead, indeed, I am afraid that the Union will move much further away from its citizens.
What do I expect from governments, then? I expect them to take this responsibility to their citizens seriously as a basis for their work. I expect them to respect democracy and to listen, listen to their people. The people have a legitimate right to take decisions, since that right is bestowed on them democratically through the electoral process and legally through the Treaties.
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