Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-14-Speech-3-040"
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"Mr President, Taoiseach, I urge you to tackle the language and culture of bureaucracy. Citizens' organisations despair when they read forms and subsidy applications in a Eurospeak that alienates citizens. All credit to the Irish Presidency for wanting to simplify forms, regulations and texts and make them citizen-friendly. The attack on this bureaucratic language and culture could consist of abolishing bureaucratic forms and replacing texts of regulations by modern, understandable and citizen-friendly text. Secondly, we could use an action network of national public organisations and national MPs as a contribution to the Irish conference in April in order to bring language and culture closer to the citizen. Thirdly, over the next few months, we ought to use TV commercials as a means of explaining, in straightforward language, to citizens in all European countries what the core message of Europe is: safety on the streets, global safety, protection of the environment, more democracy and less bureaucracy. Europe begins with the citizens in their own regions. Fourthly, we should support measures for proper governance. We need to bring down the number of pages of regulations from 80 000 to 50 000 and reduce the number of types of decisions from 23 to 6 in a bid to achieve clear, result-oriented and democratic governance. Accordingly, the European Constitution is of the highest priority and we should not get back to ‘business as usual’ until it is in place.
The Heads of Government have failed in their negotiations on the Constitution in Brussels. Without a Constitution, it is not possible to conceive of any further enlargement and any serious discussion about the financial perspectives. Also, there is no scope for any further political integration as long as democratic control by the European Parliament is lacking. Fifthly, we should support Parliament’s proposals for a citizens' test of all those EU proposals that we will be receiving in the foreseeable future. In this case, prevention is better than cure. Sixthly, we should back Parliament's subsidiarity proposal. Let us keep low what can be kept low and small-scale what can be done on a small scale, with the national parliaments as watchdogs.
These are our proposals in order to tackle a treacly bureaucratic Europe for the benefit of another, democratic Europe. Taoiseach Ahern, do you support this programme and will you do so in April?
For the rest, I would urge you to support the European Commission to maintain the rules at the Court, but also in the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact in order to bring about more European growth despite the hard euro. I would ask you to support the proposals by Wim Kok, and support the proposals for debt relief coupled to the millennium objectives for developing countries. Do you intend to take an initiative on this score and do you support the troika for Ethiopia and Eritrea where another war is threatening to break out?
The Naples agreement is an important step along the way towards a broad European safety policy. All studies have shown that all our citizens regard this as a priority, so I would urge you to be ready to bring about the Convention's Constitution. Enlargement by the addition of ten countries in the absence of a Constitution is an insult to the European citizens, for they must be central in this year of rejoicing for Europe – and the way in which you have worded your work programme leads me to have complete confidence in you."@en1
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