Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-089"
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"en.20031105.7.3-089"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Barnier has painted a bleak picture of the situation, expressing the Commission’s concern, shared by many, at the way the work is proceeding. He told us that it is not the Commission’s fault, it is certainly not the Italian Presidency’s fault, it is certainly not the fault of the Convention, still less the fault of Parliament. Well then, I would like to know whose fault it is. Is it Estonia’s fault? Poland’s? The fault of Mr Aznar, who would rather have the Nice method than that proposed by the Convention? Commissioner Barnier, might it not be that we are all a little to blame for having approached this issue with so little drive that, of course, once the gates were opened, once it became possible to say that the Convention had got this or that wrong – starting with the Commission – everyone rushed to follow the Commission’s example with regard to a text which, in all probability, being the lowest common denominator, was certainly going to be in danger, once the gates had been opened, of everyone rushing to try and amend it for the worse?
The truth is that we missed our chance at Nice, we missed our chance at Amsterdam and, in my view, we missed our chance at Maastricht; we missed the chance – which Parliament had once demanded but then forgot about – to stress that we needed, first, to go deeper – do you remember the famous concept of going deeper before enlarging? – and today’s debate shows how far we are from achieving the intentions expressed at the start of the Italian Presidency, which Parliament was still expressing in September. I now wonder whether, given the way things are progressing, it might not be appropriate for the Italian Presidency to take stock of the situation properly. It is true that you have made a number of commitments, but one of them was to take the moratorium to the United Nations, whereas we were told yesterday that no such thing is going to happen. You undertook to round off the six months with the commitment on the Convention, but the Italian Presidency – Italy, a founder country – has a duty to itself, to its history. If it were to come to a watered-down text, in my opinion, the least that the Italian Presidency should do is avoid concluding with a hotpotch text, a text that would do more harm to the Union’s interests than failing to come to a conclusion. Since this is the way things are, since we do not have a worthy, powerful draft capable of withstanding great resistance, a federalist draft along the lines of that proposed to this House by Altiero Spinelli almost 20 years ago, since we do not have a powerful vision to inspire us, then it is no surprise that everyone is digging in their heels over minor issues.
We Radicals are going to hold a convention on 13 and 14 November 2003 on this subject, in the hope that, on the basis of a reflection in which many can take part, both here and elsewhere, we might be able to achieve a position to the effect that Parliament can reject a text if the negotiations should really go very badly."@en1
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