Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-030"
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"en.20031022.2.3-030"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, there are two issues on which I would like to comment briefly. I believe that the Italian Presidency has so far done extraordinarily good work on the constitutional issue, and I would encourage it to carry the heart of the Convention into the final round of negotiations. At the same time, we should not forget that such concepts as transparency, democracy and efficiency are not simply fine words; they also signify something tangible. That is why the attempt must be made, as regards transparency and the Legislative Council, which the governments see as an irrelevance, but which is for us a significant issue, since the Council is our partner in the legislative process – to get this Legislative Council to really work in a way that brings things into the open and thus to ensure public control. Whatever the difficulties involved, an open-ended form of words needs to be found for this so as not to exclude the possibility of future developments in this direction.
The efficiency issue is in fact about the Commission, and it would do no damage if it were possible to leave untouched the Convention’s system as it stands today, with the possible addition of voting rights for all. Whilst I fully understand the Polish and Spanish positions, I would ask you, in the Council, to leave decision-making in the Council just as the Convention has proposed it, but to find some appropriate way of compensating these states, so that sacrifices are not made only on one side. Here too we must not lose sight of the need for efficiency. Criticism of Nice in this House focused on the decision-making methods in the Council, and that is something that we should not forget.
Let me make a final comment on the Convention. The United States of America has recently made it clear that they have problems with a European security and defence policy. I think that the Convention has been very clear in its formulation to the effect that structural cooperation is open to all and is not intended to adversely affect membership of NATO. This can, if need be, be enhanced, but if there is no structural cooperation in this area, if there is no advance guard to provide a solution to this, then, at some point, a defence union will be established on the continent of Europe, extraneous to the European Union and quite apart from our ties to NATO. Let the Americans, the British and others bear in mind that the alternative would be far worse in terms of their interests, and that they should therefore support the Convention’s approach to this.
We now have to talk not only about the constitution, but also about Europe’s borders. I do not think that
has so far been adequately discussed. We have to clarify the point that an eastward-looking
also means that we have to create a second option alongside full membership. Only if we are able to set limits – which means, in terms of enlargement, that we should, by not enlarging the EU too far, prevent it from being overstretched – will we be able to advance the development of the EU as it is at present. It is for that reason that the second option, in a multilateral form and alongside full Member State status, must be made available to those countries that are not going to join us in the next ten years, whether through lack of desire or capacity to do; this would be something along the lines of a ‘European Economic Area’. I would ask you to show some real initiative in this area over the coming months."@en1
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