Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-19-Speech-3-030"
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"en.20031119.1.3-030"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would specifically like to thank the Italian Presidency for all its efforts to ensure that the result of the Intergovernmental Conference closely reflects the draft Constitutional Treaty. It will have our support, and it will also have the support of some governments, but far too few up to now. We would like to see this group growing larger. Nevertheless I share the concern expressed here by Commissioner Verheugen and also by you yourself, Mr President-in-Office. I share your concern but I do not want to go into individual proposals. I am concerned about something more fundamental that is amiss in the Intergovernmental Conference.
The majority of ministers have not so far proved equal to the task before them. That is the simple truth. There is no will to shape things in the Intergovernmental Conference, but rather a blocking mentality, and that cannot continue if we are to achieve a good result in December. Almost without exception, the proposals being made represent steps backward as compared with the Convention's draft. Every time, during every discussion, the IGC does not build on the result of the Convention, it goes back on the Convention. The ministers are in the process of making things that have been dealt with simply in the draft Constitutional Treaty complicated again and detracting from their clarity and simplicity.
The rejection of the Legislative Council is just one example of this. They are refusing to give the Constitution the flexibility it needs. In fact they are going even further, by dismantling the small number of modest links that we incorporated and blocking them, so that unanimous agreement is to be required again for the medium-term financial perspective, and the European Parliament is being deprived of budgetary rights. In this way they are not just going back on the Convention's draft, they are even going back on the European Parliament's present rights. That is unacceptable. The majority of governments do not understand that a Union with over 25 Member States needs to have a new basis. They are not taking the result of the Convention seriously as a compromise that really is already a compromise and strikes a balance between North and South, large and small, and East and West in the European Union. We hope that the governments will abandon their blocking mentality and remember that they should be a force for shaping the future of Europe."@en1
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