Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-19-Speech-3-038"
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"en.20031119.1.3-038"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to comment briefly on two contributions that I thought were particularly important. First, I would like to respond to Mrs Maes. I believe that she made a very important point during the debate when she said that it is now also necessary to demonstrate that enlargement is not a problem for deepening. This is a very old issue and it has certainly not yet been resolved yet, and I would like to take this opportunity to say once again to our future Member States that it is now up to them to demonstrate that these fears are unfounded, and to show that enlargement and deepening can perfectly well go hand in hand.
I must say, however, Mrs Maes, that the example you chose was not a particularly apt one. The new Member States were not involved in the attempt by the Ecofin Council to limit Parliament's budgetary rights. They really did not play any part in that attack, but that does not affect the fundamental problem.
The second person I would like to respond to is Klaus Hänsch. I think he is quite right in his analysis that what we are presently dealing with is a question of political will. It is not as if the problems are insurmountable. It is not as if any major new issues have emerged in the debate over the last few months. Everything that we are now considering was discussed thoroughly and in detail by the Convention, and after an in-depth discussion a decision was taken which we are convinced everyone can live with.
I would like to leave you with one final thought: we need to become aware what the alternative is. You always need to consider what would happen if we cannot achieve anything and the Constitutional Treaty fails. That would imply more than the failure of any other legislative project. It would mean the failure of something absolutely central to the integration project, and the consequences would not just be legal ones. It would be a fatal mistake to imagine that we could then just continue on the basis of the Treaty of Nice. If the Constitutional Treaty failed, it would create whole new political scenarios in the European Union, which could even have a disintegrating effect within the Union. That is why we bear such enormous responsibility, and that is why it is so important to bring this project to a conclusion."@en1
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