Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-10-Speech-3-016"
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"en.20040310.1.3-016"2
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"Mr President, there is a need that we have to pursue with determination: the need for the matters concerning the Intergovernmental Conference, or rather the draft constitution, to be addressed in a transparent way, with an approach which can be understood by public opinion, the citizens and by Parliament itself. You see, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, we all appreciate – I think I speak for the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which has discussed this a great deal in recent weeks – the determination and delicacy with which the Irish Presidency is acting. It is a fact, though, that we have been in darkness for three months. Following the strong element of transparency provided by the Convention for 16 months, we are now in the dark. You talked of a range of important issues, both institutional and non-institutional, which have been raised with the Irish Presidency. What issues? Raised by whom? By how many and which governments? We do not know. You used – and I also acknowledge this – a confident tone, and said that it will be relatively easy to find consensus over the vast majority of outstanding issues. We can only try to guess at these. With regard to the most well-known issues, the only ones which have been openly discussed, we set great store by what Mr Giscard d'Estaing said yesterday to our committee: on no account may the double majority criterion be called into question for the calculation of qualified majorities. Furthermore, Mr Giscard d'Estaing called for us not to ‘torture’, on the one hand, the double majority figures, and on the other, the range of subjects for which decisions can be made by qualified majority. In this regard, I would like to reaffirm, since you spoke of papers presented by the Italian Presidency ahead of the December Council, that those documents, in our opinion, contain serious reversals precisely in this respect, and are therefore not acceptable to the European Parliament.
Lastly, you were absolutely right when you claimed that the key to early agreement is political will. We hope that an awareness of the importance and gravity of this time for the Union will prevail among the Heads of State or Government at the forthcoming summit: not adopting the Constitution would amount to a real leap in the dark for the European Union. Nevertheless, if the path to the Constitution should still appear blocked during the occasion of the forthcoming summit, with all the consequences that we can easily imagine, the positions and responsibilities of the individual governments must in that case be clear to Parliament and to the citizens."@en1
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