Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-090"
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"en.20031105.7.3-090"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we can only look at the Intergovernmental Conference’s work so far with disquiet and concern. Imagine, a Convention that makes people smile – at any rate one that is not taken very seriously – manages, despite all political and geographical boundaries and the most disparate institutions from which it is drawn, to produce a convincing, well rounded draft constitution without having to take a vote on even one thing, and now we find that the Intergovernmental Conference tears that very same draft to shreds, unpicks it without giving the slightest hint about how it intends to reach a positive outcome.
It is quite remarkable that none of the proposals discussed in the Intergovernmental Conference mark any step forward, but are all retrograde when compared with the Convention’s draft. The Intergovernmental Conference is in reverse gear. The Heads of State or Government are in the brakeman’s cab of the European Union. We are back in Nice again! The most astonishing statement came in fact from the finance ministers. They simply want to ‘governmentalise’ this Parliament’s budgetary powers. They want to deny Parliament any part in budget decisions. To which school did they go to learn the basics of democracy?
Do they not know that parliamentarianism is the pillar of democracy and that Parliament’s budgetary powers are the pillar of parliamentarianism? Not for the sake of its members’ powers, but for the sake of the democratic control that Parliament clearly must exercise. In making this proposal, the finance ministers are betraying a pre-democratic understanding of parliamentarianism. Incidentally, in this European Union the most costly favours have always been dispensed in ministerial meetings behind closed doors, not in this Parliament’s public budget debate. That is why Parliament must keep its budgetary powers.
I want to set out just a few expectations that we have of the Intergovernmental Conference and address them to the Council Presidency, whose work up until now, which has certainly been very positive, we want to endorse. Firstly, we expect agreement to be reached by the end of this year. That is technically possible. There are not a vast number of articles to argue about, only a few key institutional issues. Secondly, the Intergovernmental Conference must put Nice behind it. The Heads of State or Government who took this Union down the blind alley of Nice must now bring it out again.
Thirdly, a balance must be achieved between sometimes small-minded but basically legitimate national interests and the well-being of the European Community; in other words the Heads of State or Government must not only seek the good of their Member States, but they must also have and demonstrate a sense of responsibility for the unification of Europe, because what the Council devised in Nice is not only indefensible in democratic terms, but incomprehensible by any rational person. A new Treaty must be easy to understand; that is the only way to achieve the transparency and proximity to the citizens for which we are striving."@en1
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