Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-21-Speech-3-130"

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"Madam President, Candidate for the Commission Presidency, ladies and gentlemen, what is at stake with tomorrow’s vote? As many have already said, tomorrow is about our trust. It is a vote of confidence. Do we have the confidence that the Council’s candidate will be up to the tasks that await us in the next five years? Do we trust him to play his part correctly as guardian of the Treaties amid the constant tension between Council, Parliament and Commission? I would like to say loud and clear that I trust the candidate and I am sure that a majority in this House will be able to place the same justified confidence in him. At the same time, I would like to point out, however, that the issue is also that this confidence must not be abused. Is the candidate capable of maintaining his independence when it comes to putting his team together? I do not think it is acceptable that there are and were Member States who made their assent to you, Mr Barroso, conditional on having particular wishes granted in the allocation of Commission portfolios, but I am confident that you are independent enough for that not to happen automatically. You have said as much very clearly today. We are now entering a period where we will no longer be in a permanent Intergovernmental Conference but where we shall have to bring this European idea to life politically. Over the next few months, we will of course have to draw up the work programme together. In that connection, I hope that you and the European Parliament will cooperate closely and there, too, I am confident that you will make that cooperation a success, because we will have a lot of questions to answer together. Subsidiarity: how can we bring this concept to life, how can we ensure that rules are only created where Europe is really involved and that in all other cases the Member States, regions and local authorities can continue to act as they think fit? How can we help to make Europe more competitive? There, too, I would ask you, when you are in office in the Commission, to give some thought to whether there are not proposals from the old Commission that deserve to be withdrawn. The policy on chemicals, for example. It does not fit in with the Lisbon process of ‘increasing competitiveness’ and surely needs to be rethought. I might mention the Budget Regulation. We are suffering because we are no longer able to do what the legislator, Parliament and Council, decide in the budget because the Budget Regulation, the Commission, puts so many shackles on us in the administration that the legislator’s intentions can no longer be carried out. We are looking to you for initiatives here and I therefore hope that you will not abuse this trust, but that together we will be able to ensure that Europe makes progress in the next five years and will therefore in five years’ time, too, regain the citizens’ confidence."@en1

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