Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-14-Speech-3-022"
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"en.20040114.1.3-022"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, the Irish Presidency is today taking on the onerous task of continuing with the Intergovernmental Conference and trying to bring together positions that do not simply differ on technical points, but also due to reasons associated with the concept of sovereignty.
You said just now, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, that the new Constitution should meet the expectations of citizens and enable the EU to play a more coherent role in the world. If that were all it meant, everyone would be in complete agreement. However, there is another fundamental issue that is much more difficult: how can we cooperate while preserving democracy? Do we need to move towards removing the independence of national sovereignty through majority votes, according to the draft constitution, or, as we believe, should we preserve sovereignty and therefore the national democracies of the Member States?
We need to explain this issue clearly to citizens and, with this in mind, we urge the Irish Presidency to start doing this, to publicly and accurately set out the IGC’s points of agreement and disagreement. Of course, this would not prejudge the outcome, as we are well aware that there is no agreement on anything as long as there is not agreement on everything, but it would at least allow us to begin a genuine debate and seriously inform citizens.
We also hope that the governments are going to use the coming months to better evaluate the consequences of the plan. For example, we read in the priorities of the Irish Presidency, published by the website, ‘Sources d'Europe’, that you ‘would hope’, I said, ‘you would hope’ that the accession negotiations with Turkey could begin at the end of 2004. Could you therefore tell us what Turkey’s place would be in the institutions of the future constitution, which would be made to last, as everyone is always telling us? What would its place be in the Council in forty years time? What would its place be in the European Parliament? What would its place be in the new majority decision-making process? Mr President-in-Office of the Council, your answers would really fuel the debate."@en1
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