Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-08-Speech-1-150"
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"en.20040308.12.1-150"2
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"Madam President, Mr Dimitrakopoulos, Mr Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to begin by thanking the rapporteur most warmly for this report, for which we all have been waiting for so long. A more European approach, an increase in democracy – for which we thank God – and a greater willingness to inform and communicate are dependent on the European political parties playing their part. It is for this reason important that we should, once and for all, implement the European Statute on Political Parties, for we have been talking about it and haggling over it for so long. I see today as an important day for democracy, and an important day for Europe. I say that as one who represents the political group that has, for longer than anyone else, had a European party at the European level and was also the first to actually implement in practice the separation between the work of the political groups and that of the political parties.
The criticisms that I hear uttered are not new, but I still do not understand them. National parties can indeed stand in the elections to the European Parliament; they are funded in accordance with national legislation on the funding of political parties, and it would be wrong if national parties, parties limited to one nation, were also to form a party under the European Statute on Political Parties.
The funding of European parties has not, to date, been transparent, it has not been capable of being scrutinised by the Court of Auditors, nor has it been on the basis of their relative strengths. I do not want parties to get double helpings of everything; what I want is for the funding of parties to be laid down in a transparent and democratic way. A European party must be active in more than one state, or else it is no more than a national party.
The European Statute on Political Parties helps to make political debate more European, and we must work towards internal policies becoming more European rather than European politics being conducted more along national lines. As current electoral law makes the candidates national rather than European, the next step must be a single electoral law for the whole of Europe. The European Statute on Political Parties is a significant step in that direction."@en1
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