Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-19-Speech-3-009"
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"en.20031119.1.3-009"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to return to this House for an exchange of views on the developments that have taken place in the context of the Intergovernmental Conference since my last hearing on 5 November, directly following the IGC Ministerial Meeting of 18 November and just a few days before the Naples Conclave.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are on the eve of the decisive phase of the negotiations underway in the Intergovernmental Conference. In the forthcoming Naples Conclave, the Presidency will be presenting the text of the draft Constitutional Treaty reviewed by the group led by the Council’s Legal Service with the input of all the Member States, the European Parliament and the Commission. This impressive legal fine-tuning operation has produced an excellent result, improving the overall editorial quality of the Constitutional text as compared with the content approved by the Convention.
Again in Naples, the Presidency will submit a comprehensive proposal on the points which are still causing dispute in the constitutional negotiations in an effort to bring the positions of the Member States closer together. The basis for this action will, in any case, remain adherence to the Convention’s draft, which may be adapted, supplemented, clarified and elucidated, where necessary, but which can on no account be rewritten. I would like to stress here, on behalf of my government, our determination to avoid watered-down compromises and to seek high-minded, noble solutions which are worthy of the democratic, open and transparent dialogue which took place in the Convention. We are aware that the task we will have to carry out between now and the deadline of 12-13 December is sensitive and complex. However, we have faith in the ability of Member States’ governments to meet the European citizens’ expectations of a more cohesive, authoritative and inclusive Europe: the expectations that Parliament has succeeded in interpreting so effectively, first in the Convention and then in the context of the Intergovernmental Conference, in which it has been fully involved.
I feel I must begin by reiterating that the overall approach of the Italian Presidency remains that which my government has expressed many times in this House and in the context of the IGC itself. We remain convinced that an ambitious agreement which meets the needs and expectations of an enlarged Europe can only be achieved by a text which strays as little as possible from the Convention's draft.
Periodic meetings with Parliament and with representatives of the national parliaments, as well as requests arriving from various European civil society structures, are confirmation of this conviction. Some Member States within the Intergovernmental Conference seem, at times, to want to take a different direction and to be seeking to reopen the debate on many aspects of the Convention’s draft. I would, however, like to express a tentatively positive view in this regard. For the legitimate purposes of negotiation tactics, some countries are maintaining reserved positions and insist on requesting changes – some of them substantial – to the balance achieved by the Convention. Nevertheless, no Member State has called into question the objective – which is also an imperative political need – of bringing the Intergovernmental Conference to a successful conclusion within the timeframe suggested at Thessaloniki and confirmed at Brussels in October by our Heads of State and Government. The very way the IGC is progressing is confirmation, moreover, of the intrinsic value of the Convention’s draft: we have observed, on almost all the points discussed thus far, that a revisionist approach seeking to amend the Convention’s draft text does not lead to consensus on alternative solutions but just widens the gaps between opposing positions. It is my opinion, therefore, that, as we enter the final straits of the negotiations, each country will recognise the common benefits of an ambitious constitutionalisation of the integration process, despite the minor, specific sacrifices that some provisions may involve.
During yesterday's meeting, we debated, in particular, the role of the Union Foreign Minister and the issue of the revision of the Constitutional Treaty, taking note as well of a number of recommendations from the Danish government concerning the protocol relating to the opt-out clauses by which that country benefits with regard to Justice and Home Affairs. The first point had already been addressed in previous meetings of the IGC. The Presidency decided, therefore, to present a number of specific proposals based on the following principles: preserving the ‘double-hat’ formula devised by the Convention, with the clarification that the independence of the Commission Vice-President/Foreign Minister concerns the aspects associated with their Commission responsibilities and does not concern Council activities (for example, implementation of the common foreign and security policy and the Presidency of the General Affairs and External Relations Council); specifying the implications for the Foreign Minister in the event that the European Parliament were to adopt a motion of censure against the Commission; laying down explicitly that the President of the Commission cannot call for the resignation of the Vice-President/Foreign Minister without the agreement of the European Council; strengthening the provision giving the Vice-President/Foreign Minister the responsibility of ensuring consistency between the CFSP and the Union's external relations.
The presentation
of these points – fully in keeping with the approach defined by the Convention – was welcomed by many Member States. Of significance is the fact that the Presidency's proposals are headed in the right direction, including for those delegations hostile to the Convention’s text. Clearly, a definitive agreement on the duties of the future Foreign Minister cannot be taken out of the context of the agreement on the overall future institutional framework of the Union. This is a matter to which we will return in the context of the Ministerial Conclave of 28-29 November and, subsequently, in the concluding session of the IGC at the level of Heads of State and Government.
The solution envisaged by the Convention for future revision of the Constitutional Treaty is based on two fundamental principles: the need for unanimous adoption and ratification for the formal revision of all the constitutional provisions, and the existence of
both general and specific, that, in clearly defined sectors, allow voting rules to be changed, to make the transition from unanimous to qualified majority voting, or the legislative procedure to be changed, moving from special to ordinary, which ensures absolute parity between the Council and the European Parliament, subject to the common agreement of all Member States in the European Council, consultation of the European Parliament and prior notification of the national parliaments.
The Presidency has proposed some adjustments to these mechanisms defined by the Convention, in order both to increase the involvement of the national parliaments in the process of activating the escalator clauses and to confirm the option of making the procedure for revising the Constitutional text less unwieldy with regard to a limited number of specific sections of the third part of the Constitutional Treaty. Indeed, as Parliament has rightly pointed out, the procedure laid down by the Convention seems excessively rigid and is in danger of making the enlarged Union incapable of updating its own constitutional regulations even where minor provisions are concerned.
Yesterday's exchange of views confirmed that positions remain divergent on this point. Nevertheless, we must persevere in our efforts to find common ground for an agreement which, taking the Convention
as a starting point, reconciles the need for timely, effective involvement of the parliaments, essential for democratic legitimacy in a Union of States and citizens governed by the rule of the law, with the need to prevent rigidity in revision procedures that could impede the future development of a Union which now has a large number of Members.
In the course of yesterday's meeting, the Danish Foreign Minister drew the Conference's attention to the question of the Protocol governing the participation of Denmark in the Union's Justice and Home Affairs activities. Indeed, the new structure of the Constitutional Treaty – which leaves behind the dysfunctional, outdated pillar structure – requires the revision of this Protocol, which was drawn up when judicial cooperation in criminal and police matters was still subject to intergovernmental procedures. On the basis of the recommendations of the Danish government, in the next few days, we will draft an updated version of the Protocol that will have to fulfil a number of key requirements: adequate adaptation of the present ‘opt-out’ system to the legal framework that emerges from the Constitutional Treaty; the option for the Danish government to adopt an ‘opt-in’ formula in future on the basis of its own constitutional rules; compatibility of the Protocol with the pursuit of effective Union action in the field of justice and home affairs, to which the Convention text rightly attributed central importance."@en1
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