Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-01-Speech-2-014"
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"en.20030701.1.2-014"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Greek Presidency fell at a difficult time, and it has been a success. I should like to congratulate you on this achievement, Mr President-in-Office. Incidentally, you have proved that the principle of a six-monthly rotating presidency of the European Council is a creative and enriching force, and this is something that the future permanent Council presidency will have to prove.
The Chalkidiki Summit was also a success. This was not a foregone conclusion. The Heads of State or Government came together and nearly all of them had a long list of national ambitions that, even at the last minute, they wanted to salvage from the Convention's draft constitution. But when our Heads of State or Government saw each other they were deeply moved and left the Convention's draft in peace. This was a great success, except for the moment when it was decided to regard the Laeken mandate as fulfilled and to inform us – and I should now like to address this point, Mr President-in-Office – that Part III now only required some purely technical work. This was the first that we had heard of this: otherwise, why on earth are we continuing our work in the Convention in July? Because there was no consensus on the Praesidium's draft. Hundreds upon hundreds of amendments – 1 700 of them – have been tabled and not on technical issues. Essentially a very clear question is at stake in this work: namely whether we are going to deliver on the promises, values and aims set out in the first and second parts, whether we are actually going to make the competences, responsibilities and principles of democracy, that we enshrined by consensus in the first and second parts, a reality, or whether we are simply setting ourselves new objectives without freeing Europe from the chains of the past.
I should like to illustrate how critical this situation is with the aid of a few examples. In the first part, of course, we declare our overarching support for the principles of democracy and the rule of law, but in the third part there are still key areas where only the Council can legislate, for example on European social policy. National parliaments lose the right to ratify international treaties without this House gaining that right. In one of the most difficult cases, concerning the reduced powers of the European Court of Justice to supervise one of the most sensitive areas in the constitution, that of police and judicial cooperation on home affairs, 80% of the Convention have demanded the deletion of the exemptions. No policy without judicial control, no law without Parliament – these are clearly not technical issues, but issues of self-determination and the definition of Europe. The ability to act is a key principle, but in the last few nights of the Convention whole swathes of policy disappeared from the majority voting list and reappeared under unanimity. We were put under pressure by governments. The majority of the Convention wants more; the people of Europe want more. We know that the European public demand far more of Europe than the governments of Europe are willing to give. The Convention does not need to make technical decisions here; it needs to achieve fundamental reforms. Take public services of general interest, cornerstones of European social policy; the vast majority of the Convention want them to be explicitly protected in the constitution. So far this request has been turned down.
I am not saying this to belittle the work of the Convention or the current draft, but to make this House aware that a great deal of what we have enshrined in the first and second parts still needs to be delivered and that we will not be keeping our promises to the people if we do not make one further effort to bring about a genuine reform in the third part."@en1
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