Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-19-Speech-3-021"
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"en.20031119.1.3-021"2
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"Mr President, to return briefly to the speech by Mrs Berès just now, I believe it is particularly clumsy – to put it mildly – that the European Parliament is represented in the Intergovernmental Conference by two Members of the same nationality, that is of German nationality, which demonstrates a point which had often been raised during the Convention, the overrepresentation of Germany within the European Parliament, which is undoubtedly one of the most dangerous consequences of the Treaty of Nice.
I confess that I do not know how the Conference of Presidents takes its decisions, but the fact that this point, which does not seem to be secondary, had not been mentioned, seems to me to be regrettable in terms of the image of Parliament and of Europe in the years to come.
While it is difficult at this stage to pass judgment on the IGC, I nevertheless believe that we should share the Commission's concern, since it seems to me that we are moving from Charybdis to Scylla. The Convention tried hard initially to study the content of European policies – economic, social, monetary, foreign – and then finally settled, it is true, for a modest institutional compromise. Having said that, I believe that in comparison, the Intergovernmental Conference is moving even further away from the concerns of the European citizens and becoming a kind of free-for-all on quotas of votes and seats, at the very same time that the European citizens are in the process – and this has not escaped you, Mr Wurtz mentioned it – of turning more directly against Europe and contesting the very foundations of European integration, as we have seen with this European social forum which I would personally have re-named ‘European Sovereigntist Forum’, given the debates which took place there.
Finally, we talk a lot about the
which are in fact dark tunnels, in which the last prerogatives of the national democracies are going to get lost. I would, though, like to return to an incident which took place yesterday in order to demonstrate a little to this Parliament the extent to which it can appear schizophrenic from time to time. One group, the largest in our institution, has reprimanded Mr Prodi for his involvement in Italian politics, despite the fact that all the representatives of this Parliament have argued, during the Convention, for the President of the Commission to be elected by Parliament and that consequently it should be possible to campaign. I remember that this issue was mentioned several times. In fact, it would be interesting to be able to campaign for Prodi or for Aznar during the European elections.
Yesterday, Mr Prodi simply anticipated a decision which I believe to be regrettable, which consists of politicising the role of President of the Commission."@en1
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