Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-114"
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"en.20031105.8.3-114"2
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"Mr President, I believe that Commissioner Patten is aware of the commitment and support I have always tried to bring into my actions in favour of the Commission. I am not one of those Members who believe that the Commission is a gathering of stateless bureaucrats, but quite the contrary, I believe it is a key institution in the project of European construction.
Therefore, Commissioner, if the House ratifies the proposal as approved by the Committee on Development, I would urge the Commission to accept it, not as a demonstration of high-handedness, but as a demonstration of coherence, nor as a way of undermining the Commission’s authority, but simply in the normal exercise of the competences attributed to this Parliament in accordance with the institutional balance laid down in the Treaties.
The Commission is also aware, however, that that support and that commitment cannot be seen as a blank cheque. Parliament has the right to its opinion, and I believe that it would not be a Parliament worthy of that name if it did not exercise, responsibly of course, its competences, democratically controlling the Commission, investing it and acting as a Parliament which debates, which rejects, which ratifies and rectifies.
That is precisely the exercise we are involved in at the moment, an exercise in which Parliament carries out its duties confidently within the framework of the competences attributed to it by the Treaties and, above all, in a field in which we are acting in accordance with the principle of codecision.
It is difficult, Mr President, to think of a report on which there has been greater consensus in this House, a consensus which is expressed through a proposal which calls for one regulation for Asia and another for Latin America, in the belief that the specific characteristics of these two regions would be better addressed by means of a separate regulation for each one. As Mrs Sauquillo said, in order to be coherent with the existing budgetary requirements and also in order to give Latin America and Asia the same treatment as other regions and, therefore, to prevent any form of discrimination.
I have said that there has been a consensus which will be difficult to reproduce in this Parliament, because this opinion has been issued by the plenum of Parliament, it has been issued by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, it has been issued by the competent delegations and it has been issued, in the same way, by the committee responsible, which is the Committee on Development and Cooperation, and not by a tight margin, but by 26 in favour and two abstentions, one of them by the rapporteur.
I would like to say that the other aspect which the rapporteur’s group calls into question – by means of the amendments – is the creation of a bi-regional solidarity fund. And it is surprising, Mr President, because it is an initiative which has already been endorsed in plenary by all the political groups, including the rapporteur's group; an initiative, Mr President, which has been endorsed from a regulatory point of view, which does not imply any additional money, which has been approved by the Committee on Budgets in the 2004 budget, which is an initiative which falls within the context of the priorities of the next European Union-Latin America summit, to be held in Mexico next year, for which we have no great proposals to put on the table.
Above all, Mr President, it is surprising because it is an initiative which is intended to prevent the progress that has been made in the fields of co-existence and democratisation being jeopardised as a result of social fragility, as the case of Bolivia recently demonstrated.
What is most surprising, Mr President, is that one of the arguments used and which is used as an authority to reject this proposal is the position of the Council of Ministers, as if the European Commission had to respond to the Council of Ministers and take its positions more seriously than those of the European Parliament.
Mr President, we are dealing with a very significant case in which this Parliament is gambling some of its credibility, some of its prestige and some of its reputation as an institution."@en1
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