Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-14-Speech-3-023"
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"en.20040114.1.3-023"2
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"Mr President, Taoiseach, I should like to begin by wishing the Irish presidency success in its work over the coming six months. You have set out a number of important priorities for action in the period ahead, not least that of kick-starting the Lisbon agenda on economic reform and competitiveness.
I want to concentrate today on the issue of the draft Constitution and the situation following the failure of the Brussels Summit in December. However, as we have made clear on a number of occasions, the Union must also get to grips with advancing the stalled Lisbon process. Ireland has made great economic strides in recent years, but throughout the Union there remains a reluctance to embrace genuine economic reform.
I was pleased to note in the press this week that the Commission wishes to take forward the liberalisation of the internal market in services. Such issues are worth tackling in the short to medium term but, as regards the long term, EU Member States need to be more ambitious in their approach. However, my enthusiasm is tempered by the reality that liberalisation in areas such as medicine, legal and fiscal advice and employment agencies, whilst worthy, is essentially a distraction from the big picture of further liberalisation in the telecommunications, energy and financial services sectors. I urge the Taoiseach to exert his influence over the Union's agenda in the months ahead to promote real and lasting economic reform. If he sets the agenda, he will have our full and enthusiastic support.
On the question of the draft Constitution, which came to grief at Brussels last December, I would simply say this: our view has always been that the draft Constitution was moving the EU in the wrong direction. The aspirations of the Laeken Summit two years ago, when the Heads of Government expressed the hope that the Convention would bring the Union closer to its citizens, has singularly failed to materialise.
I would in any case like to ask the Taoiseach, in the light of the collapse of the talks, to answer one very specific question. In recent correspondence I have had with Mr Peter Hain, the British Government's main representative on the Convention, he refers to the ‘Treaty that we agreed at the European Council ...’. Does the presidency recognise that a treaty was ‘agreed’, or is it the case, as has been said before, that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed? We all need to have urgent clarification on that."@en1
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