Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-20-Speech-2-009"
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"en.20040720.3.2-009"2
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"Mr President, I warmly welcome all the honourable Members and in particular the other candidates. I belong to the generation of Spaniards who, with Europe on the horizon, played a leading role in the transition to democracy, and at a very young age we took on important political responsibilities. Councillor and trade union delegate, Member of Parliament for eighteen years, five as Chairman of the Committee on European Affairs and twelve as Minister or Secretary of State, and then candidate for Prime Minister. I have also been a member of the Convention, and for ten years in a row I have represented my country in different formations of the Council. I lost battles there which were then won in Parliament, from its position closer to the citizens.
I can say that I have good knowledge of the functioning of the Community institutions, but for me Europe is more than a political experiment, it is a vital project. I am as European as I am Spanish and ‘
[I am also Catalan]’, but I am neither of the old nor of the new Europe. I am simply a European who rejects denominations intended to perpetuate our division. At some point we have all been new Members of the Union and, from Vilnius to Lisbon, or from Edinburgh to Athens, we are all of the same Europe.
Reunification put an end to the tragic inheritance of Hitler and Stalin, but there is still much for us to do in order to make it effective. It will put our solidarity to the test and require us to respect the most diverse of opinions. As President of the European Parliament I shall ensure that it operates correctly within a more complex linguistic context.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must eliminate any grey areas which harm the image of this Parliament. We need a Statute so that the Members of all the countries can carry out their duties under the same conditions of transparency, dignity and efficiency. I will therefore begin by being demanding in our relations with the Council. Ladies and gentlemen, over the next few years, this Parliament will be standing at the crossroads of history. We have reached it by means of the path of success. The centuries-old enemies of yesterday are now the world’s most cooperative neighbours, but today the European project is suffering the threefold problem of size, efficiency and legitimacy, for which the Constitution – to which I contributed – provides the best solution we have. Without it we would be, for a very long time, nothing but a big market. And, if Europe abandons its political ambitions, the world will suffer the destructive confrontation between materialism on the one hand and fundamentalism on the other.
I will therefore be calling on all Members of Parliament to participate in the great task of ratifying the Constitution. That will be a great moment for this Parliament: to talk to the Europeans about Europe, to convince them that ours is a living project, with soul, although it is inevitably a complex one, which has an effect on the problems that concern them most, such as employment and security, terrorism and migration, problems which cannot be resolved without European integration.
We must project the image of this institution towards the citizens we represent, making our message intelligible. In a Europe with an unemployment rate of 9% and with 50 million poor people, we must convince our citizens of the importance that Community policies, the Lisbon strategy and the Gothenburg environmental dimension have on cohesion and competitiveness, which we believe to be complementary rather than the contradictory.
Ladies and gentlemen, we all want a President of Parliament who is close and accessible, but their role is not that of a Head of Government who applies a party political programme. The President must have solid support and play the role of strategically promoting the institution they represent. I am very aware of this. If I am elected, I will represent the diversity of Parliament and firmly promote its role in relation to the other Community institutions.
I will end with a message of optimism: Europe is a long-term project and its path is made by walking. The crises awaiting us will not be any more serious than the ones we have already overcome. We must and we can mobilise the peoples of Europe to write a new page in our history in peace and therefore, and to this end, I would ask you to vote for my candidature as President of the European Parliament. Thank you very much."@en1
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"també soc català"1
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