Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-28-Speech-3-013"
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"en.20040128.3.3-013"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I too wish to express my gratitude to the Irish Presidency of the Council, which, I believe, has given the necessary response to this House’s December resolution, and has got the debate moving. It has found new ways of structuring the way we talk to each other, and is applying the necessary sensitivity to getting us to do it. Taking all these things together, there is, in my judgment, a real chance of this House’s objective being approached even before 1 May or prior to the European elections, and of a result being achieved. I see this as important; we can all see that there is no desire to maintain the debate’s momentum until next December, nor to maintain the collective awareness of what was more or less already agreed under the Italian presidency, namely that we have to work to a tighter deadline in order to keep the two together. It is because this is generally known that there is ongoing discussion in the various Member States, and so I am aware of a general willingness to produce a result as soon as possible.
At the same time, let us bear in mind what this House would like to see: further democratisation of the European Union, of course, and the Budget issue, which we see as decisive and to which I would like to return. There is the issue of transparency, so that the public can know who in Europe is responsible for what, and also, of course, the issue of efficiency. That is what we have to get to grips with at the present moment, and it will be decisive.
I think it important that we should not explicitly specify certain models right down to the last millimetre. What has to be decisive is that the decision-making structure should be more efficient than that proposed in Nice, and should enable an enlarged Community to act; that has to be the crucial yardstick, and I believe that, if we take this as our basis and apply the requisite capacity for imagination, we will be able to find compromises that will enable this to be accepted by those countries that often have difficulties on this point, for it is connected – or can be – with other issues as a means towards reaching a compromise that, while being truly fair, does justice to the three goals of democratisation, transparency and efficiency.
Let me now mention a final point. In the aftermath of Brussels, there has been so much discussion of a multiple-speed Europe, something we have always had within the Treaty, whether about the euro, Schengen or anything else. It was always the case, though, that everyone could talk to everyone else, in the same fora, and that all Members had the opportunity of joining in. What we are today describing as a necessity is a defence union. If we do not get the constitution, there will be irresistible pressure for a defence union to be established outside the framework of the European Union. We will then no longer be obliged to talk to each other every day in the same fora, things will fall apart, and then, rather than there being a multiple-speed Europe within the framework of the European Union, Europe will drift apart. The end result – not because anyone wants it, but because these things happen in the course of time – will be that, at some point in the next five or ten years, we will be where we were before 1914, in a Europe of alliances. I think we all should know how undesirable this would be, and so we should see it as our responsibility to get a result now."@en1
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