Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-21-Speech-3-020"
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"en.20040721.1.3-020"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I too welcome you here and wish to thank you. I was born in Salzburg, a city re-established on Roman ruins by Irish monks in the tenth century, who drained the swamps, laid the foundations of the city and mediated in the disputes between tribal chiefs. So you will understand why we are not amazed when Irish missionaries civilise Europe and carry out the fundamental tasks of draining swamps – including the swamps of national egoisms – and laying foundations, including those of European democracy.
While we are on the subject of mediating in disputes between tribal chiefs, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I am grateful to you for your achievement in civilising Europe. You have maintained the constitution’s architecture, and that is no doubt your most crucial achievement. The governments, of course, have given us a lesson in who really wields the power. On the basis of possessing, formally, the right of final decision, they have been arrogant enough to rearrange the Convention’s draft according to their own tastes and, on various points, to take their pick. That is a pity. What makes the lesson in power all the sadder is that Parliament could, now that we are dealing with the Presidency of the Commission, deliver an appropriate response, for it, formally speaking, has the right of final decision and could well show whether or not it is willing to make the decision more real than a formality and compel respect for the House. That would show who has the will to power and who does not. Thank you, Mr President.
Where the Constitution was to be signed was a long-standing bone of contention for the Italian Presidency, which made it possible for something to be able to be signed in Rome by coming up with the text. That is a quite different achievement, and one for which we are grateful.
It is not quite accurate to say that the Convention draft has come through unscathed. Removing the Legislative Council from the Convention draft amounted to doing away with one of the Convention’s great ideas and with what would have been an immense democratic leap forward in terms of the separation of powers, one that has now not been taken. What we have is the Council making more laws, with all the dubious legitimacy of legislation by a government. Out of double majority, a formula for decision-making that every citizen could understand and accept, we have brought forth another mass of confusing mathematical formulae. Where the Convention envisaged decisions by qualified majority, unanimous decisions have been introduced, and the EU’s capacity to act has suffered thereby. The social dimension, too – and that is an area where the Convention was not successful either – has been further circumscribed, with, instead of full employment, merely a high level of it.
I do not believe that Parliament has had much of a part to play in the later stages of all this. Now, though, the governments will need us if people are to accept this Constitution and if their parliaments are to ratify it.
Let me express my particular gratitude to you, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, for having held to the original concept of the Constitution and of the Convention draft."@en1
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