Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-096"
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"en.20031105.7.3-096"2
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"Mr President, the Intergovernmental Conference has not just been a forum for rubber-stamping the Convention, as was feared among governments at the start and was very much hoped for here in Parliament, and this IGC seems to have developed into a real IGC. It is nevertheless important that the Convention’s fundamental ideas are not discarded during the work of the IGC.
What is most important about the IGC is how good the results are and not at all whether the timetable is adhered to. At present it is obvious that there are practical problems with the timetable. The IGC only has approximately five weeks more to go and things have not been moving along at the required pace. The issues on which consensus has been achieved are mainly inferior versions of the balanced proposals put forward by the Convention. I am referring here, for example, to the Legislative Council getting buried.
The Convention’s proposal regarding the weighting of votes must be held on to. It is, to my mind, a fair compromise for both the big and the small countries. It is necessary to abandon the complicated system regarding the weighting of votes under the Treaty of Nice so that decision-making in the EU does not become immobilised. We have to remember that the Member States that are big in terms of their population were met halfway at the Convention with the agreement that a decision needed the backing of three fifths of the citizens of the EU. At the same time, however, there was a guarantee that the qualified minority needed to block decisions could not be achieved by a few big Member States, such as the Mediterranean bloc, by forming an alliance.
It is imperative that the proposals by Spain and Poland to alter the balance of power between the governments of the Member States should be rejected. If a compromise over a Convention proposal has to made in some direction, this should be done by going in another direction, which is to say the 50-50 model, where half the Member States and half the population are needed for a decision to be supported.
In the future it will probably come about that every Member State will be guaranteed its own Commissioner with voting rights. Horrifying images and theories about an overly large and stagnant Commission and idle Commissioners were greatly exaggerated. I am sure jobs and meaningful subject areas can be found for 25 Commissioners. Besides, organising work and tasks rationally and making possible a hierarchy of different ranks based on a rotating system organised fairly will have an effect on the practical way in which things get done, if that is required."@en1
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